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FRANCISCO riZARRO. 



THE 



SPANISH PIONEERS 



•y 



BY 
CHARLES fI^'LUMMIS 

AUTHOR OF " A NEW MEXICO DAVID," " STRANGE 
CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY," ETC. 



CllustratEtJ 

SEVENTH EDITION 




CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1918 



£U3 
.L9S 



Copyright 
By Charles F. Lummis 

A.D. 1893 

^. /^ /a 



W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO 






V, 



TO 



ONE OF SUCH WOMEN AS MAKE HEROES AND 

KEEP CHIVALRY ALIVE IN OUR LESS 

SINGLE-HEARTED DAYS : 

ELIZABETH BACON CUSTER 



In pronouncing the Spanish names give — 



a the sound ol 


: ah 


e " 


it 


ay 


1 


t< 


ee 


/ " 


ct 


h 





€t 


oh 


u '* 


tt 


00 


h is silent 






// is sounded like Hi in million 


n 




" ny in lanyard 


hua 




** wa in water 



The views presented in this book have 
already taken their place in historical litera- 
ture, but they are certainly altogether new 
ground for a popular work. Because it is 
new, some who have not fully followed the 
recent march of scientific investigation may 
fear that it is not authentic. I can only say 
that the estimates and statements embodied 
in this volume are strictly true, and that I 
hold myself ready to defend them from the 
standpoint of historical science. 

I do this, not merely from the motive 
of personal regard toward the author, but 
especially in view of the merits of his work, 
its value for the youth of the present and of 
the coming generations. 

AD. F. BANDELIER. 



PREFACE. 



IT is because I believe that every other 
young Saxon-American loves fair play 
and admires heroism as much as I do, that 
this book has been written. That we have not 
given justice to the Spanish Pioneers is simply 
because we have been misled. They made a 
record unparalleled; but our text-books have 
not recognized that fact, though they no 
longer dare dispute it. Now, thanks to the 
New School of American History, we are 
coming to the truth, — a truth which every 
manly American will be glad to know. In 
this country of free and brave men, race- 
prejudice, the most ignorant of all human 
ignorances, must die out. We must respect 
manhood more than nationality, and admire 
it for its own sake wherever found, — and it is 
found everywhere. The deeds that hold the 
world up are not of any one blood. We may 
be born anywhere, — that is a mere accident ; 



12 PREFACE. 

but to be heroes we must grow by means 
which are not accidents nor provincialisms, 
but the birthright and glory of humanity. 

We love manhood ; and the Spanish 
pioneering of the Americas was the largest 
and longest and most marvellous feat of man- 
hood in all history. It was not possible for 
a Saxon boy to learn that truth in my boy- 
hood ; it is enormously difficult, if possible, 
now. The hopelessness of trying to get from 
any or all English text-books a just picture 
of the Spanish hero in the New World made 
me resolve that no other young American 
lover of heroism and justice shall need to 
grope so long in the dark as I had to ; and 
for the following glimpses into the most in- 
teresting of stories he has to thank me less 
than that friend of us both, A. F. Bandelier, 
the master of the New School. Without the 
light shed on early America by the scholar- 
ship of this great pupil of the great Humboldt, 
my book could not have been written, — nor 
by me without his generous personal aid. 

C. F. L. 



CONTENTS, 



I. Cije Btoali Stotj. 



CHAPTER 

I. The Pioneer Nation . . 

II. A Muddled Geography . 

III. Columbus the Finder . . 

IV. Making Geography . . . 
V. The Chapter of Conquest 

VI. A Girdle round the World 

VII. Spain in the United States 

VIII. Two Continents Mastered . 



17 
25 
36 

43 
56 
71 
78 
90 



II. Specimen Pioneers. 

I. The First American Traveller . . loi 

II. The Greatest American Traveller 117 

III. The War of the Rock 125 

IV. The Storming of the Sky-City . . 135 
V. The Soldier Poet 144 

VI. The Pioneer Missionaries .... 149 

VII. The Church-Builders in New Mexico 158 

VIII. Alvarado's Leap 170 

IX. The American Golden Fleece . . 181 



14 



CONTENTS. 



III. 5Ef)e ®r£at£0t (Conquest, 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Swineherd of Truxillo . . . 203 

II. The Man who would not give up . 215 

III. Gaining Ground 225 

IV. Peru as it was 238 

V. The Conquest of Peru 246 

VI. The Golden Ransom 257 

VII. Atahualpa's Treachery and Death 265 
VIII. Founding a Nation. —The Siege of 

Cuzco 275 

IX. The Work of Traitors 284 



THE BROAD STORY. 



HOW AMERICA WAS FOUND AND TAMED. 



THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



THE PIONEER NATION. 

IT is now an established fact of history that the 
Norse rovers had found and made a few expe- 
ditions to North America long before Columbus. 
For the historian nowadays to look upon that Norse 
discovery as a myth, or less than a certainty, is to 
confess that he has never read the Sagas. The 
Norsemen came, and even camped in the New World, 
before the year looo ; but they only camped. They 
built no towns, and practically added to the world's 
knowledge nothing at all. They did nothing to en- 
title them to credit as pioneers. The honor of giv- 
ing America to the world belongs to Spain, — the 
credit not only of discovery, but of centuries of such 
pioneering as no other nation ever paralleled in any 
land. It is a fascinating story, yet one to which our 
histories have so far done scant justice. History on 
true principles was an unknown science until within 
a century ; and public opinion has long been ham- 
pered by the narrow statements and false conclusions 



1 8 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

of closet Students. Some of these men have been 
not only honest but most charming writers ; but their 
very popularity has only helped to spread their errors 
wider. But their day is past, and the beginnings of 
new light have come. No student dares longer re- 
fer to Prescott or Irving, or any of the class of which 
they were the leaders, as authorities in history ; they 
rank to-day as fascinating writers of romance, and 
nothing more. It yet remains for some one to make 
as popular the truths of American history as the 
fables have been, and it may be long before an un- 
mistaken Prescott appears ; but meantime I should 
like to help young Americans to a general grasp of 
the truths upon which coming histories will be based. 
This book is not a history ; it is simply a guideboard 
to the true point of view, the broad idea, — starting 
from which, those who are interested may more safely 
go forward to the study of details, while those who 
can study no farther may at least have a general 
understanding of the most romantic and gallant 
chapter in the history of America. 

We have not been taught how astonishing it was 
that one nation should have earned such an over- 
whelming share in the honor of giving us America ; 
and yet when we look into the matter, it is a very 
startling thing. There was a great Old World, full of 
civilization : suddenly a New World was found, — the 
most important and surprising discovery in the whole 
annals of mankind. One would naturally suppose that 
the greatness of such a discovery would stir the intel- 
ligence of all the civilized nations about equally, and 



THE PIONEER NATION. 19 

that they would leap with common eagerness to avail 
themselves of the great meaning this discovery had 
for humanity. But as a matter of fact it was not so. 
Broadly speaking, all the enterprise of Europe was 
confined to one nation, — and that a nation by no 
means the richest or strongest. One nation practically 
had the glory of discovering and exploring America, of 
changing the whole world's ideas of geography, and 
making over knowledge and business all to herself for 
a century and a half. And Spain was that nation. 

It was, indeed, a man of Genoa who gave us 
America ; but he came as a Spaniard, — from Spain, 
on Spanish faith and Spanish money, in Spanish ships 
and with Spanish crews ; and what he found he took 
possession of in the name of Spain. Think what a 
kingdom Ferdinand and Isabella had then besides 
their little garden in Europe, — an untrodden half 
world, in which a score of civilized nations dwell 
to-day, and upon whose stupendous area the newest 
and greatest of nations is but a patch ! What a dizzi- 
ness would have seized Columbus could he have fore- 
seen the inconceivable plant whose unguessed seeds 
he held that bright October morning in 1492 ! 

It was Spain, too, that sent out the accidental 
Florentine whom a German printer made godfather 
of a half world that we are barely sure he ever saw, 
and are fully sure he deserves no credit for. To 
name America after Amerigo Vespucci was such an 
ignorant injustice as seems ridiculous now; but, at 
all events, Spain sent him who gave his name to the 
New World. 



20 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Columbus did little beyond finding America, 
which was indeed glory enough for one life. But 
of the gallant nation which made possible his dis- 
covery there were not lacking heroes to carry out 
the work which that discovery opened. It was a 
century before Anglo-Saxons seemed to waken 
enough to learn that there really was a New World, 
and into that century the flower of Spain crowded 
marvels of achievement. She was the only Euro- 
pean nation that did not drowse. Her mailed 
explorers overran Mexico and Peru, grasped their 
incalculable riches, and made those kingdoms in- 
alienable parts of Spain. Cortez had conquered 
and was colonizing a savage country a dozen times 
as large as England years before the first English- 
speaking expedition had ever seen the mere coast 
where it was to plant colonies in the New World ; 
and Pizarro did a still greater work. Ponce de 
Leon had taken possession for Spain of what is now 
one of the States of our Union a generation before 
any of those regions were seen by Saxons. That 
first traveller in North America, Alvar Nuiiez Cabeza 
de Vaca, had walked his unparalleled way across 
the continent from Florida to the Gulf of California 
half a century before the first foot of our ancestors 
touched our soil. Jamestown, the first English set- 
tlement in America, was not founded until 1607, and 
by that time the Spanish were permanently estab- 
lished in Florida and New Mexico, and absolute 
masters of a vast territory to the south. They had 
already discovered, conquered, and partly colonized 



THE PIONEER NATION. 21 

inland America from northeastern Kansas to Buenos 
Ayres, and from ocean to ocean. Half of the United 
States, all Mexico, Yucatan, Central America, Vene- 
zuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, New 
Granada, and a huge area besides, were Spanish by 
the time England had acquired a few acres on the 
nearest edge of America. Language could scarcely 
overstate the enormous precedence of Spain over all 
other nations in the pioneering of the New World. 
They were Spaniards who first saw and explored the 
greatest gulf in the world ; Spaniards who discovered 
the two greatest rivers; Spaniards who found the 
greatest ocean ; Spaniards who first knew that there 
were two continents of America; Spaniards who 
first went round the world ! They were Spaniards 
who had carved their way into the far interior of our 
own land, as well as of all to the south, and founded 
their cities a thousand miles inland long before the 
first Anglo-Saxon came to the Atlantic seaboard. 
That early Spanish spirit oi finding out was fairly 
superhuman. Why, a poor Spanish lieutenant with 
twenty soldiers pierced an unspeakable desert and 
looked down upon the greatest natural wonder of 
America or of the world — the Grand Canon of 
the Colorado — three full centuries before any 
*' American " eyes saw it ! And so it was from 
Colorado to Cape Horn. Heroic, impetuous, im- 
prudent Balboa had walked that awful walk across 
the Isthmus, and found the Pacific Ocean, and built 
on its shores the first ships that were ever made in 
the Americas, and sailed that unknown sea, and had 



22 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

been dead more than half a century before Drake 
and Hawkins saw it. 

England's lack of means, the demoralization fol- 
lowing the Wars of the Roses, and religious dissen- 
sions were the chief causes of her torpidity then. 
When her sons came at last to the eastern verge of 
the New World they made a brave record ; but they 
were never called upon to face such inconceivable 
hardships, such endless dangers as the Spaniards 
had faced. The wilderness they conquered was 
savage enough, truly, but fertile, well wooded, well 
watered, and full of game ; while that which the 
Spaniards tamed was such a frightful desert as no 
human conquest ever overran before or since, and 
peopled by a host of savage tribes to some of whom 
the petty warriors of King Philip were no more to 
be compared than a fox to a panther. The Apaches 
and the Araucanians would perhaps have been no 
more than other Indians had they been transferred 
to Massachusetts; but in their own grim domains 
they were the deadliest savages that Europeans ever 
encountered. For a century of Indian wars in the 
east there were three centuries and a half in the 
southwest. In one Spanish colony (in Bolivia) as 
many were slain by the savages in one massacre 
as there were people in New York city when the 
war of the Revolution began ! If the Indians in 
the east had wiped out twenty-two thousand set- 
tlers in one red slaughter, as did those at Sorata, 
it would have been well up in the eighteen-hundreds 
before the depleted colonies could have untied the 



THE PIONEER NATION. 2$ 

uncomfortable apron-strings of the mother coun- 
try, and begun national housekeeping on their own 
account. 

When you know that the greatest of English text- 
books has not even the name of the man who first 
sailed around the world (a Spaniard), nor of the 
man who discovered Brazil (a Spaniard), nor of 
him who discovered CaUfornia (a Spaniard), nor 
of those Spaniards who first found and colonized in 
what is now the United States, and that it has a 
hundred other omissions as glaring, and a hundred 
histories as untrue as the omissions are inexcusable, 
you will understand that it is high time we should 
do better justice than did our fathers to a subject 
which should be of the first interest to all real 
Americans. 

The Spanish were not only the first conquerors of 
the New World, and its first colonizers, but also its 
first civilizers. They built the first cities, opened the 
first churches, schools, and universities ; brought the 
first printing-presses, made the first books ; wrote 
the first dictionaries, histories, and geographies, and 
brought the first missionaries ; and before New 
England had a real newspaper, Mexico had a sev- 
enteenth-century attempt at one ! 

One of the wonderful things about this Spanish 
pioneering — almost as remarkable as the pioneering 
itself — was the humane and progressive spirit which 
marked it from first to last. Histories of the sort 
long current speak of that hero-nation as cruel to 
the Indians; but, in truth, the record of Spain in 



24 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

that respect puts us to the blush. The legislation 
of Spain in behalf of the Indians everywhere was 
incomparably more extensive, more comprehensive, 
more systematic, and more humane than that of 
Great Britain, the Colonies, and the present United 
States all combined. Those first teachers gave the 
Spanish language and Christian faith to a thousand 
aborigines, where we gave a new language and re- 
ligion to one. There have been Spanish schools 
for Indians in America since 1524. By 1575 — 
nearly a century before there was a printing-press 
in English America — many books in twelve different 
Indian languages had been printed in the city of 
Mexico, whereas in our history John Eliot's Indian 
Bible stands alone; and three Spanish universities 
in America were nearly rounding out their century 
when Harvard was founded. A surprisingly large 
proportion of the pioneers of America were college 
men; and intelligence went hand in hand with 
heroism in the early settlement of the New World. 



A MUDDLED GEOGRAPHY. 25 



II. 

A MUDDLED GEOGRAPHY. 

THE least of the difficulties which beset the 
finders of the New World was the then tre- 
mendous voyage to reach it. Had that three thou- 
sand miles of unknown sea been the chief obstacle, 
civihzation would have overstepped it centuries 
before it did. It was human ignorance deeper 
than the Atlantic, and bigotry stormier than its 
waves, which walled the western horizon of Europe 
for so long. But for that, Columbus himself would 
have found America ten years sooner than he did ; 
and for that matter, America would not have waited 
for Columbus's five-times-great-grandfather to be 
born. It was really a strange thing how the rich- 
est half of the world played so long at hide-and- 
seek with civilization ; and how at last it was found, 
through the merest chance, by those who sought 
something entirely different. Had America waited 
to be discovered by some one seeking a new con- 
tinent, it might be waiting yet. 

Despite the fact that long before Columbus va- 
grant crews of half a dozen different races had 
already reached the New World, they had left 



26 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

neither mark on America nor result in civilization ; 
and Europe, at the very brink of the greatest dis- 
covery and the greatest events in history, never 
dreamed of it. Columbus himself had no imagin- 
ings of America. Do you know what he started 
westward to find? Asia. 

The investigations of recent years have greatly 
changed our estimates of Columbus. The tendency 
of a generation ago was to transform him to a demi- 
god, — an historical figure, faultless, rounded, all 
noble. That was absurd ; for Columbus was only a 
man, and all men, however great, fall short of per- 
fection. The tendency of the present generation 
is to go to the other extreme, — to rob him of 
every heroic quality, and make him out an unhanged 
pirate and a contemptible accident of fortune ; so 
that we are in a fair way to have very little Colum- 
bus left. But this is equally unjust and unscientific. 
Columbus in his own field was a great man despite 
his failings, and far from a contemptible one. 

To understand him, we must first have some gen- 
eral understanding of the age in which he lived. 
To measure how much of an inventor of the great 
idea he was, we must find out what the world's ideas 
then were, and how much they helped or hindered 
him. 

In those far days geography was a very curious 
affair indeed. A map of the world then was some- 
thing which very few of us would be able to identify 
at all ; for all the wise men of all the earth knew less 
of the world's topography than an eight-year old 



A MUDDLED GEOGRAPHY. 27 

schoolboy knows to-day. It had been decided at 
last that the world was not flat, but round, — though 
even that fundamental knowledge was not yet old ; 
but as to what composed half the globe, no man 
alive knew. Westward from Europe stretched the 
"Sea of Darkness," and beyond a little way none 
knew what it was or contained. The variation of 
the compass was not yet understood. Everything 
was largely guess-work, and groping in the dark. 
The unsafe little " ships " of the day dared not 
venture out of sight of land, for there was nothing 
reliable to guide them back; and you will laugh 
at one reason why they were afraid to sail out into 
the broad western sea, — they feared that they might 
unknowingly get over the edge, and that ship and 
crew might fall off into space ! Though they knew 
the world was roundish, the attraction of gravitation 
was not yet dreamed of; and it was supposed that 
if one got too far over the upper side of the ball 
one would drop off! 

Still, it was a matter of general belief that there 
was land in that unknown sea. That idea had been 
growing for more than a thousand years, — for by 
the second century it began to be felt that there 
were islands beyond Europe. By Columbus's time 
the map-makers generally put on their rude charts 
a great many guess-work islands in the Sea of Dark- 
ness. Beyond this swarm of islands was supposed 
to He the east coast of Asia, — and at no enormous 
distance, for the real size of the world was under- 
estimated by one third. Geography was in its mere 



28 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

infancy ; but it was engaging the attention and study 
of very many scholars who were learned for their day. 
Each of them put his studious guessing into maps, 
which varied astonishingly from one another. 

But one thing was accepted : there was land 
somewhere to the west, — some said a few islands, 
some said thousands of islands, but all said land of 
some sort. So Columbus did not invent the idea; 
it had been agreed upon long before he was born. 
The question was not if there was a New World, but 
if it was possible or practicable to reach it without 
saiHng over the jumping-off place or encountering 
other as sad dangers. The world said No ; Colum- 
bus said Yes, — and that was his claim to greatness. 
He was not an inventor, but an accomplisher ; and 
even what he accomplished physically was less 
remarkable than his faith. He did not have to 
teach Europe that there was a new country, but 
to believe that he could get to that country ; and 
his faith in himself and his stubborn courage in 
making others believe in him was the greatness 
of his character. It took less of a man to make 
the final proof than to convince the public that 
it was not utter foolhardiness to attempt the proof 
at all. 

Christopher Columbus, as we call him (as Colon ^ 
he was better known in his own day) , was born in 
Genoa, Italy, the son of Dominico Colombo, a wool- 
comber, and Suzanna Fontanarossa. The year of 
his birth is not certain ; but it was probably about 
1 Pronounced Co-Ion, — the Spanish form. 



A MUDDLED GEOGRAPHY. 29 

1446. Of his boyhood we know nothing, and little 
enough of all his early life, — though it is certain 
that he was active, adventurous, and yet very stu- 
dious. It is said that his father sent him for awhile 
to the University of Pavia ; but his college course 
could not have lasted very long. Columbus himself 
tells us that he went to sea at fourteen years of age. 
But as a sailor he was able to continue the studies 
which interested him most, — geography and kindred 
topics. The details of his early seafaring are very 
meagre ; but it seems certain that he sailed 
to England, Iceland, Guinea, and Greece, — which 
made a man then far more of a traveller than does 
a voyage round the world nowadays ; and with this 
broadening knowledge of men and lands he was 
gaining such grasp of navigation, astronomy, and 
geography as was then to be had. 

It is interesting to speculate how and when 
Columbus first conceived an idea of such stupen- 
dous importance. It was doubtless not until he 
was a mature and ex- rv 

perienced man, who ^ 



had become not only ' j • A • S* •^ 



a skilled sailor, but 'y^ Jy\, y 

one familiar with what _ *^ ^ J 

other sailors had done. 
The Madeiras and the 

Azores had been dis- Autograph of Christopher Columbus. 

covered more than a century. Prince Henry, the 
Navigator (that great patron of early exploration), 
was sending his crews down the west coast of 



30 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Africa, — for at that time it was not even known 
what the lower half of Africa was. These expe- 
ditions were a great help to Columbus as well as 
to the world's knowledge. It is almost certain, 
too, that when he was in Iceland he must have 
heard something of the legends of the Norse rovers 
who had been to America. Everywhere he went 
his alert mind caught some new encouragement, 
direct or indirect, to the great resolve which was 
half unconsciously forming in his mind. 

About 1473 Columbus wandered to Portugal; and 
there formed associations which had an influence 
on his future. In time he found a wife, Felipa 
Moniz, the mother of his son and chronicler Diego. 
As to his married life there is much uncertainty, 
and whether it was creditable to him or the reverse. 
It is known from his own letters that he had other 
children than Diego, but they are left in obscurity. 
His wife is understood to have been a daughter of 
the sea-captain known as "The Navigator," whose 
services were rewarded by making him the first 
governor of the newly discovered island of Porto 
Santo, off Madeira. It was the most natural thing 
in the world that Columbus should presently pay a 
visit to his adventurous father-in-law; and it was, 
perhaps, while in Porto Santo on this visit that he 
began to put his great thoughts in more tangible 
shape. 

With men like "the world-seeking Genoese," a 
resolve like that, once formed, is as a barbed arrow, 
— difficult to be plucked out. From that day on he 



A MUDDLED GEOGRAPHY. 



31 



knew no rest. The central idea of his life was 
''Westward ! Asia ! " and he began to work for its 
realization. It is asserted that with a patriotic 
intention he hastened home to make first offer of 
his services to his native land. But Genoa was not 
looking for new worlds, and declined his proffer. 
Then he laid his plans before John II. of Portugal. 
King John was charmed with the idea ; but a coun- 
cil of his wisest men assured him that the plan was 
ridiculously foolhardy. At last he sent out a secret 
expedition, which after sailing out of sight of shore 
soon lost heart and returned without result. When 
Columbus learned of this treachery, he was so in- 
dignant that he left for Spain at once, and there 
interested several noblemen and finally the Crown 
itself in his audacious hopes. But after three years 
of profound deliberation, a junta ^ of astronomers 
and geographers decided that his plan was absurd 
and impossible, — the islands could not be reached. 
Disheartened, Columbus started for France ; but 
by a lucky chance tarried at an Andalusian monas- 
tery, where he won the guardian, Juan Perez de 
Marchena, to his views. This monk had been con- 
fessor to the queen ; and through his urgent inter- 
cession the Crown at last sent for Columbus, who 
returned to court. His plans had grown within him 
till they almost overbalanced him, and he seems to 
have forgotten that his discoveries were only a hope 
and not yet a fact. Courage and persistence he 
certainly had ; but we could wish that now he had 
1 Pronounced Hoon-\.i}ci. 



32 THE SPANISH PIONEERS, 

been a trifle more modest. When the king asked on 
what terms he would make the voyage, he replied : 
'* That you make me an admiral before I start ; 
that I be viceroy of all the lands that I shall find ; 
and that I receive one tenth of all the gain." Strong 
demands, truly, for the poor wool-comber's son of 
Genoa to speak to the dazzling king of Spain ! 

Ferdinand promptly rejected this bold demand ; 
and in January, 1492, Columbus was actually on his 
way to France to try to make an impression there, 
when he was overtaken by a messenger who brought 
him back to court. It is a very large debt that we owe 
to good Queen Isabella, for it was due to her strong 
personal interest that Columbus had a chance to find 
the New World. When all science frowned, and 
wealth withheld its aid, it was a woman's persistent 
faith — aided by the Church — that saved history. 

There has been a great deal of equally unscientific 
writing done for and against that great queen. Some 
have tried to make her out a spotless saint, — a rather 
hopeless task to attempt in behalf of any human 
being, — and others picture her as sordid, merce- 
nary, and in no wise admirable. Both extremes 
are equally illogical and untrue, but the latter is the 
more unjust. The truth is that all characters have 
more than one side ; and there are in history as in 
everyday life comparatively few figures we can 
either deify or wholly condemn. Isabella was not 
an angel, — she was a woman, and with failings, as 
every woman has. But she was a remarkable woman 
and a great one, and worthy our respect as well as 



A MUDDLED GEOGRAPHY. 



zz 



our gratitude. She has no need to fear comparison 
of character with "Good Queen Bess," and she 
made a much greater mark on history. It was not 
sordid ambition nor avarice which made her give 
ear to the world-finder. It was the woman's faith 
and sympathy and intuition which have so many 
times changed history, and given room for the ex- 
ploits of so many heroes who would have died 
unheard of if they had depended upon the slower 
and colder and more selfish sympathy of men. 

Isabella took the lead and the responsibility her- 
self. She had a kingdom of her own ; and if her 
royal husband Ferdinand did not deem it wise to 
embark the fortunes of Arragon in such a wild enter- 
prise, she could meet the expenses from her realm of 
Castile. Ferdinand seems to have cared little either 
way; but his fair-haired, blue-eyed queen, whose 
gentle face hid great courage and determination, 
was enthusiastic. 

The Genoan's conditions were granted ; and on 
the 17th of April, 1492, one of the most important 
papers that ever held ink was signed by their Majes- 
ties, and by Columbus. If you could see that pre- 
cious contract, you would probably have very little 
idea whose autograph was the lower one, — for 
Columbus's rigmarole of a signature would cause 
consternation at a teller's window nowadays. The 
gist of this famous agreement was as follows : — 

I. That Columbus and his heirs forever should 
have the office of admiral in all the lands he might 
discover. 

3 



34 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

2. That he should be viceroy and governor-gen- 
eral of these lands, with a voice in the appointment 
of his subordinate governors. 

3. That he should reserve for himself one 
tenth part of the gold, silver, pearls, and all other 
treasures acquired. 

4. That he and his lieutenant should be sole 
judges, concurrent with the High Admiral of Cas- 
tile, in matters of commerce in the New World. 

5. That he should have the privilege of con- 
tributing one eighth to the expenses of any other 
expedition to these new lands, and should then be 
entitled to one eighth of the profits. 

It is a pity that the conduct of Columbus in Spain 
was not free from a duplicity which did him little 
credit. He entered the service of Spain, Jan. 20, 
i486. As early as May 5, 1487, the Spanish Crown 
gave him three thousand maravedis (about ^18) 
"for some secret service for their Majesties;" and 
during the same year, eight thousand maravedis 
more. Yet after this he was secretly proffering his 
services again to the King of Portugal, who in 1488 
wrote Columbus a letter giving him the freedom of 
the kingdom in return for the explorations he was to 
make for Portugal. But this fell through. 

Of the voyage itself you are more likely to have 
heard, — the voyage which lasted a few months, but 
to earn which the strong-hearted Genoese had borne 
nearly twenty years of disheartenment and opposi- 
tion. It was the years of undaunted struggling to 
convert the world to his own unfathomed wisdom 



A MUDDLED GEOGRAPHY. 



35 



that showed the character of Columbus more fully 
than all he ever did after the world believed him. 

The difficulties of securing official consent and 
permission being thus at last overcome, there was 
only the obstacle left of getting an expedition 
together. This was a very serious matter; there 
were few who cared to join in such a foolhardy 
undertaking as it was felt to be. Finally, volun- 
teers failing, a crew had to be gathered forcibly by 
order of the Crown ; and with his nao the " Santa 
Maria," and his two caravels the ** Nina " and the 
" Pinta," filled with unwilling men, the world-finder 
was at last ready. 



36 THE SPANISH PIONEERS, 



III. 

COLUMBUS, THE FINDER. 

COLUMBUS sailed from Palos, Spain, on Friday, 
August 3, 1492, at 8 a. m., with one hundred 
and twenty Spaniards under his command. You 
know how he and his brave comrade Pinzon held up 
the spirits of his weakening crew ; and how, on the 
morning of October 12, they sighted land at last. 
It was not the mainland of America, — which Colum- 
bus never saw until nearly eight years later, — but 
Watling's Island. The voyage had been the longest 
west which man had yet made ; and it was very char- 
acteristically illustrative of the state of the world's 
knowledge then. When the variations of the mag- 
netic needle were noticed by the voyagers, they 
decided that it was not the needle but the north 
star that varied. Columbus was perhaps as well 
informed as any other geographer of his day; but 
he came to the sober conclusion that the cause 
of certain phenomena must be that he was sailing 
over a bump on the globe / This was more strongly 
brought out in his subsequent voyage to the Orinoco, 
when he detected even a worse earth-bump, and 
concluded that the world must be pear-shaped ! It 
is interesting to remember that but for an accidental 



COLUMBUS, THE FINDER. 37 

change of course, the voyagers would have struck 
the Gulf Stream and been carried north, — in which 
case what is now the United States would have 
become the first field of Spain's conquest. 

The first white man who saw land in the New 
World was a common sailor named Rodrigo de 
Triana, though Columbus himself had seen a light 
the night before. Although it is probable — as you 
will see later on — that Cabot saw the actual con- 
tinent of America before Columbus (in 1497), it 
was Columbus who found the New World, who took 
possession of it as its ruler under Spain, and who 
even founded the first European colonies in it, — 
building, and settling with forty-three men, a town 
which he named La Navidad (the Nativity), on the 
island of San Domingo (Espaiiola, as he called it), 
in December, 1492. Moreover, had it not been 
that Columbus had already found the New World, 
Cabot never would have sailed. 

The explorers cruised from island to island, find- 
ing many remarkable things. In Cuba, which they 
reached October 26, they discovered tobacco, which 
had never been known to civilization before, and 
the equally unknown sweet potato. These two 
products, of the value of which no early explorer 
dreamed, were to be far more important factors in 
the money-markets and in the comforts of the world 
than all the more dazzling treasures. Even the 
hammock and its name were given to civilization by 
this first voyage. 

In March, 1493, after a fearful return voyage, 



38 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Columbus was again in Spain, telling his wondrous 
news to Ferdinand and Isabella, and showing them 
his trophies of gold, cotton, brilliant- feathered birds, 
strange plants and animals, and still stranger men, — •. 
for he had also brought back with him nine Indians, 
the first Americans to take a European trip. Every 
honor was heaped upon Columbus by the apprecia- 
tive country of his adoption. It must have been a 
gallant sight to see this tall, athletic, ruddy-faced 
though gray-haired new grandee of Spain riding in 
almost royal splendor at the king's bridle, before an 
admiring court. 

The grave and graceful queen was greatly interested 
in the discoveries made, and enthusiastic in prepar- 
ing for more. Both intellectually and as a woman, 
the New World appealed to her very strongly ; and 
as to the aborigines, she became absorbed in earnest 
plans for their welfare. Now that Columbus had 
proved that one could sail up and down the globe 
without falling over that "jumping-oif place," there 
was no trouble about finding plenty of imitators. ^ 
He had done his work of genius, — he was the path- 
finder, — and had finished his great mission. Had 
he stopped there, he would have left a much greater 
name ; for in all that came after he was less fitted 
for his task. 

A second expedition was hastened ; and Sept. 25, 
1493, Columbus sailed again, — this time taking fif- 
teen hundred Spaniards in seventeen vessels, with 

1 As he himself complains : " The very tailors turned 
explorers." 



COLUMBUS, THE FINDER. 39 

animals and supplies to colonize his New World. 
And now, too, with strict commands from the Crown 
to Christianize the Indians, and always to treat them 
well, Columbus brought the first missionaries to 
America, — twelve of them. The wonderful mother- 
care of Spain for the souls and bodies of the savages 
who so long disputed her entrance to the New World 
began early, and it never flagged. No other nation 
ever evolved or carried out so noble an '' Indian 
policy" as Spain has maintained over her western 
possessions for four centuries. 

The second voyage was a very hard one. Some 
of the vessels were worthless and leaky, and the 
crews had to keep bailing them out. 

Columbus made his second landing in the New 
World Nov. 3, 1493, on the island of Dominica. 
His colony of La Navidad had been destroyed ; and 
in December he founded the new city of Isabella. 
In January, 1494, he founded there the first church 
in the New World. During the same voyage he 
also built the first road. 

As has been said, the first voyages to America 
were little in comparison with the difficulty in get- 
ting a chance to make a voyage at all; and the 
hardships of the sea were nothing to those that 
came after the safe landing. It was now that Colum- 
bus entered upon the troubles which darkened the 
remainder of a life of glory. Great as was his genius 
as an explorer, he was an unsuccessful colonizer; 
and though he founded the first four towns in all the 
New World, they brought him only ill. His colo- 



40 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

nists at Isabella soon grew mutinous ; and San Tonias, 
which he founded in Hayti, brought him no better 
fortune. The hardships of continued exploration 
among the West Indies presently overcame his health, 
and for nearly half a year he lay sick in Isabella. 
Had it not been for his bold and skilful brother 
Bartholomew, of whom we hear so little, we might 
not have heard so much of Columbus. 

By 1495, ^^^ J^s^ displeasure of the Crown with 
the unfitness of the first viceroy of the New World 
caused Juan Aguado to be sent out with an open 
commission to inspect matters. This was more than 
Columbus could bear ; and leaving Bartholomew as 
adelantado (a rank for which we now have no equiva- 
lent ; it means the officer in chief command of an 
expedition of discoverers), Columbus hastened to 
Spain and set himself right with his sovereigns. 
Returning to the New World as soon as possible, 
he discovered at /tast the mainland (that of South 
America), Aug. i, 1498, but at first thought it an 
island, and named it Zeta. Presently, however, he 
came to the mouth of the Orinoco, whose mighty 
current proved to him that it poured from a 
continent. 

Stricken down by sickness, he returned to Isabella, 
only to find that his colonists had revolted against 
Bartholomew. Columbus satisfied the mutineers by 
sending them back to Spain with a number of slaves, 
— a disgraceful act, for which the times are his only 
apology. Good Queen Isabella was so indignant at 
this barbarity that she ordered the poor Indians to be 



COLUMBUS, THE FINDER. 41 

liberated, and sent out Francisco de Bobadilla, who 
in 1500 arrested Columbus and his two brothers, in 
Espafiola, and sent them in irons to Spain. Colum- 
bus speedily regained the sympathy of the Crown, 
and Bobadilla was superseded ; but that was the 
end of Columbus as viceroy of the New World. In 
1502 he made his fourth voyage, discovered Mar- 
tinique and other islands, and founded his fourth 
colony, — Bethlehem, 1503. But misfortune was 
closing in upon him. After more than a year of 
great hardship and distress, he returned to Spain ; 
and there he died May 20, 1506. 

The body of the world-finder was buried in Val- 
ladolid, Spain, but was several times transferred to 
new resting-places. It is claimed that his dust now 
lies, with that of his son Diego, in a chapel of the 
cathedral of Havana ; but this is doubtful. We are 
not at all sure that the precious relics were not 
retained and interred on the island of Santo Do- 
mingo, whither they certainly were brought from 
Spain. At all events, they are in the New World, 
— at peace at last in the lap of the America he 
gave us. 

Columbus was neither a perfect man nor a scoun- 
drel, — though as each he has been alternately pic- 
tured. He was a remarkable man, and for his day 
and calling a good one. He had with the faith of 
genius a marvellous energy and tenacity, and through 
a great stubbornness carried out an idea which seems 
to us very natural, but to the world then seemed 
ridiculous. As long as he remained in the profes- 



42 



THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



sion to which he had been reared, and in which he 
was probably unequalled at the time, he made a 
wonderful record. But when, after half a century 
as a sailor, he suddenly turned viceroy, he became 
the proverbial " sailor on land," — absolutely " lost." 
In his new duties he was unpractical, headstrong, 
and even injurious to the colonization of the New 
World. It has been a fashion to accuse the Spanish 
Crown of base ingratitude toward Columbus; but 
this is unjust. The fault was with his own acts, 
which made harsh measures by the Crown neces- 
sary and right. He was not a good manager, nor 
had he the high moral principle without which no 
ruler can earn honor. His failures were not from 
rascality but from some weaknesses, and from a gen- 
eral unfitness for the new duties to which he was too 
old to adapt himself. 

We have many pictures of Columbus, but probably 
none that look like him. There was no photography 
in his day, and we cannot learn that his portrait was 
ever drawn from Hfe. The pictures that have come 
down to us were made, with one exception, after 
his death, and all from memory or from descriptions 
of him. He is represented to have been tall and 
imposing, with a rather stern face, gray eyes, aquiline 
nose, ruddy but freckled cheeks, and gray hair, and 
he liked to wear the gray habit of a Franciscan 
missionary. Several of his original letters remain 
to us, with his remarkable autograph, and a sketch 
that is attributed to him. 



MAKING GEOGRAPHY, 43 



IV. 

MAKING GEOGRAPHY. 

WHILE Columbus was sailing back and forth 
between the Old World and the new one 
which he had found, was building towns and nam- 
ing what were to be nations, England seemed 
almost ready to take a hand. All Europe was in- 
terested in the strange news which came from Spain. 
England moved through the instrumentality of a 
Venetian, whom we know as Sebastian Cabot. On 
the 5th of March, 1496, — four years after Colum- 
bus's discovery, — Henry VII. of England granted 
a patent to "John Gabote, a citizen of Venice," and 
his three sons, allowing them to sail westward on a 
voyage of discovery. John, and Sebastian his son, 
sailed from Bristol in 1497, and saw the mainland 
of America at daybreak, June 24, of the same year, 
— probably the coast of Nova Scotia, — but did noth- 
ing. After their return to England, the elder Cabot 
died. In May, 1498, Sebastian sailed on his second 
voyage, which probably took him into Hudson's Bay 
and a few hundred miles down the coast. There is 
little probability in the theory that he ever saw any 
part of what is now the United States. He was a 
northern rover, — so thoroughly so, that the three 



44 



THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



hundred colonists whom he brought out perished 
with cold in July. 

England did not treat her one early explorer well ; 
and in 1 5 1 2 Cabot entered the more grateful service 
of Spain. In 15 17 he sailed to the Spanish pos- 
sessions in the West Indies, on which voyage he 
was accompanied by an Englishman named Thomas 
Pert. In August, 1526, Cabot sailed with another 
Spanish expedition bound for the Pacific, which had 
already been discovered by a heroic Spaniard ; but 
his officers mutinied, and he was obliged to abandon 
his purpose. He explored the Rio de la Plata (the 
'* Silver River ") for a thousand miles, built a fort at 
one of the mouths of the Parana, and explored part 
of that river and of the Paraguay, — for South Amer- 
ica had been for nearly a generation a Spanish pos- 
session. Thence he returned to Spain, and later to 
England, where he died about 1557. 

Of the rude maps which Cabot made of the New 
World, all are lost save one which is preserved in 
France ; and there are no documents left of him. 
Cabot was a genuine explorer, and must be included 
in the list of the pioneers of America, but as one 
whose work was fruitless of consequences, and who 
saw, but did not take a hand in, the New World. 
He was a man of high courage and stubborn per- 
severance, and will be remembered as the discov- 
erer of Newfoundland and the extreme northern 
mainland. 

After Cabot, England took a nap of more than 
half a century. When she woke again, it was to find 



MAKING GEOGRAPHY. 



45 



that Spain's sleepless sons had scattered over half 
the New World ; and that even France and Portu- 
gal had left her far behind. Cabot, who was not an 
Englishman, was the first English explorer ; and the 
next were Drake and Hawkins, and then Captains 
Amadas and Barlow, after a lapse of seventy-five 
and eighty-seven years, respectively, — during which 
a large part of the two continents had been discov- 
ered, explored, and settled by other nations, of which 
Spain was undeniably in the lead. Columbus, the 
first Spanish explorer, was not a Spaniard ; but with 
his first discovery began such an impetuous and un- 
ceasing rush of Spanish-born explorers as achieved 
more in a hundred years than all the other nations 
of Europe put together achieved here in America's 
first three hundred. Cabot saw and did nothing ; 
and three quarters of a century later Sir John Haw- 
kins and Sir Francis Drake — whom old histories 
laud greatly, but who got rich by selling poor Afri- 
cans into slavery, and by actual piracy against un- 
protected ships and towns of the colonies of Spain, 
with which their mother England was then at peace 
■ — saw the West Indies and the Pacific, more than 
half a century after these had become possessions 
of Spain. Drake was the first Englishman to go 
through the Straits of Magellan, — and he did it 
sixty years after that heroic Portuguese had found 
them and christened them with his life-blood. Drake 
was probably first to see what is now Oregon, — 
his only important discovery. He "took posses- 
sion" of Oregon for England, under the name of 



46 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

" New Albion ; " but old Albion never had a settle- 
ment there. 

Sir John Hawkins, Drake's kinsman, was, like 
him, a distinguished sailor, but not a real discoverer 
or explorer at all. Neither of^them explored or 
colonized the New World ; and neither left much 
more impress on its history than if he had never 
been born. Drake brought the first potatoes to 
England ; but the importance even of that dis- 
covery was not dreamed of till long after, and by 
other men. 

Captains Amadas and Barlow, in 1584, saw our 
coast at Cape Hatteras and the island of Roanoke, 
and went away without any permanent result. The 
following year Sir Richard Grenville discovered Cape 
Fear, and there was an end of it. Then came Sir 
Walter Raleigh's famous but petty expeditions to 
Virginia, the Orinoco, and New Guinea, and the 
less important voyages of John Davis (in 1585-87) 
to the Northwest. Nor must we forget brave Mar- 
tin Frobisher's fruitless voyages to Greenland in 
1576-81. This was the end of England in America 
until the seventeenth century. In 1602 Captain 
Gosnold coasted nearly our whole Atlantic seaboard, 
particularly about Cape Cod; and five years later 
yet was the beginning of English occupancy in the 
New World. The first English settlement which 
made a serious mark on history — as Jamestown 
did not — was that of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1602 ; 
and they came not for the sake of opening a 
new world, but to escape the intolerance of the 




ONE OF THE MOQUI TOWNS. 



See page ^7. 



MAKING GEOGRAPHY. 47 

old. In fact, as Mr. Winsor has pointed out, the 
Saxon never took any particular interest in America 
until it began to be understood as a co7timercial 
opportunity. 

But when we turn to Spain, what a record is that 
of the hundred years after Columbus and before 
Plymouth Rock ! In 1499 Vincente Yaiiez de Pin- 
zon, a companion of Columbus, discovered the coast 
of Brazil, and claimed the new country for Spain, 
but made no settlement. His discoveries were at 
the mouths of the Amazon and the Orinoco ; and 
he was the first European to see the greatest river 
in the world. In the following year Pedro Alvarez 
Cabral, a Portuguese, was driven to the coast of 
Brazil by a storm, *' took possession " for Portugal, 
and founded a colony there. 

As to Amerigo Vespucci, the inconsiderable ad- 
venturer whose name so overshadows his exploits, 
his American claims are extremely dubious. Ves- 
pucci was born in Florence in 145 1, and was an 
educated man, — his father being a notary and his 
uncle a Dominican who gave him a good schooling. 
He became a clerk in the great house of the Medi- 
cis, and in their service was sent to Spain about 
1490. There he presently got into the employ of 
the merchant who fitted out Columbus's second 
expedition, — a Florentine named Juanoto Berardi. 
When Berardi died, in 1495, ^^ ^^f^ ^^ unfinished 
contract to fit out twelve ships for the Crown ; and 
Vespucci was intrusted with the completion of the 
contract. There is no reason whatever to believe 



48 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

that he accompanied Columbus either on the first 
or the second voyage. According to his own story, 
he sailed from Cadiz May lo, 1497 (in a Spanish 
expedition), and reached the mainland eighteen 
days before Cabot saw it. The statement of ency- 
clopaedias that Vespucci " probably got as far north 
as Cape Hatteras " is ridiculous. The proof is ab- 
solute that he never saw an inch of the New World 
north of the equator. Returning to Spain in the 
latter part of 1498, he sailed again. May 16, 1499, 
with Ojeda, to San Domingo, a voyage on which he 
was absent about eighteen months. He left Lisbon 
on his third voyage, May 10, 1501, going to Brazil. 
It is not true, despite the encyclopaedias, that he 
discovered and named the Bay of Rio Janeiro ; both 
those honors belong to Cabral, the real discoverer 
and pioneer of Brazil, and a man of vastly greater 
historical importance than Vespucci. Vespucci's 
fourth voyage took him from Lisbon (June 10, 
1503) to Bahia, and thence to Cape Frio, where 
he built a little fort. In 1504 he returned to Portu- 
gal, and in the following year to Spain, where he 
died in 15 12. 

These voyages rest only on Vespucci's own state- 
ments, which are not to be implicitly believed. It 
is probable that he did not sail at all in 1497? and 
quite certain that he had no share whatever in the 
real discoveries in the New World. 

The name " America " was first invented and 
applied in 1507 by an ill-informed German printer, 
named Waldzeemiiller, who had got hold of Amerigo 



MAKING GEOGRAPHY. 49 

Vespucci's documents. History is full of injustices, 
but never a greater among them all than the chris- 
tening of America. It would have been as appro- 
priate to call it Walzeemiillera. The first map of 
America was made in 1500 by Juan de la Cosa, a 
Spaniard, — and a very funny map it would seem to 
the schoolboy of to-day. The first geography of 
America was by Enciso, a Spaniard, in 15 17. 

It is pleasant to turn from an overrated and very 
dubious man to those genuine but almost unheard-of 
Portuguese heroes, the brothers Gaspard and Miguel 
Corte-Real. Gaspard sailed from Lisbon in the 
year 1500, and discovered and named Labrador, — 
"the laborer." In 1501 he sailed again from 
Portugal to the Arctic, and never returned. After 
waiting a year, his brother Miguel led an expedition 
to find and rescue him ; but he too perished, with all 
his men, among the ice-floes of the Arctic. A third 
brother wished to go in quest of the lost explorers, 
but was forbidden by the king, who himself sent 
out a relief expedition of two ships ; but no trace of 
the gallant Corte-Reals, nor of any of their men, was 
ever found. 

Such was the pioneering of America up to the end 
of the first decade of the sixteenth century, — a se- 
ries of gallant and dangerous voyages (of which only 
the most notable ones of the great Spanish inrush 
have been mentioned) , resulting in a few ephemeral 
colonies, but important only as a peep into the doors 
of the New World. The real hardships and dangers, 
the real exploration and conquest of the Americas, 
4 



50 



THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



began with the decade from 15 lo to 1520, — the 
beginning of a century of such exploration and con- 
quest as the world never saw before nor since. Spain 
had it all to herself, save for the heroic but compara- 
tively petty achievements of Portugal in South Amer- 
ica, between the Spanish points of conquest. The 
sixteenth century in the New World was unparalleled 
in military history ; and it produced, or rather de- 
veloped, such men as tower far above the later 
conquerors in their achievement. Our part of the 
hemisphere has never made such startling chapters 
of conquest as were carved in the grimmer wilder- 
nesses to our south by Cortez, Pizarro, Valdivia, and 
Quesada, the greatest subduers of wild America. 

There were at least a hundred other early Spanish 
heroes, unknown to public fame and buried in ob- 
scurity until real history shall give them their well- 
earned praise. There is no reason to believe that 
these unremembered heroes were more capable of 
great things than our Israel Putnams and Ethan 
Aliens and Francis Marions and Daniel Boones ; 
but they did much greater things under the spur of 
greater necessity and opportunity. A hundred such, 
I say ; but really the list is too long to be even cata- 
logued here ; and to pay attention to their greater 
brethren will fill this book. No other mother-nation 
ever bore a hundred Stanleys and four Julius Caesars 
in one century ; but that is part of what Spain did 
for the New World. Pizarro, Cortez, Valdivia, and 
Quesada are entitled to be called the Caesars of the 
New World ; and no other conquests in the history of 



MAKING GEOGRAPHY. 51 

America are at all comparable to theirs. As among 
the four, it is almost difficult to say which was great- 
est ; though there is really but one answer possible 
to the historian. The choice lies of course between 
Cortez and Pizarro, and for years was wrongly made. 
Cortez was first in time, and his operations seem to 
us nearer home. He was a highly educated man 
for his time, and, like Caesar, had the advantage of 
being able to write his own biography; while his 
distant cousin Pizarro could neither read nor write, 
but had to "make his mark," — a striking contrast 
with the bold and handsome (for those days) auto- 
graph of Cortez. But Pizarro — who had this lack 
of education as a handicap from the first, who went 
through infinitely greater hardships and difficulties 
than Cortez, and managed the conquest of an area as 
great with a third as many men as Cortez had, and 
very much more desperate and rebellious men — was 
beyond question the greatest Spanish American, and 
the greatest tamer of the New World. It is for that 
reason, and because such gross injustice has been 
done him, that I have chosen his marvellous career, 
to be detailed later in this book, as a picture of the 
supreme heroism of the Spanish pioneers. 

But while Pizarro was greatest, all four were 
worthy the rank they have been assigned as the 
Caesars of America. 

Certain it is that the bald-headed little great man 
of old Rome, who crowds the page of ancient his- 
tory, did nothing greater than each of those four 
Spanish heroes, who with a few tattered Spaniards 



52 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

in place of the iron legions of Rome conquered 
each an inconceivable wilderness as savage as Caesar 
found, and five times as big. Popular opinion long 
did a vast injustice to these and all other of the 
Spanish conquistadores, belittling their military 
achievements on account of their alleged great supe- 
riority of weapons over the savages, and taxing them 
with a cruel and relentless extermination of the ab- 
origines. The clear, cold light of true history tells 
a different tale. In the first place, the advantage of 
weapons was hardly more than a moral advantage 
in inspiring awe among the savages at first, for the 
sadly clumsy and ineffective firearms of the day were 
scarcely more dangerous than the aboriginal bows 
which opposed them. They were effective at not 
much greater range than arrows, and were tenfold 
slower of delivery. As to the cumbrous and usually 
dilapidated armor of the Spaniard and his horse, it 
by no means fully protected either from the agate- 
tipped arrows of the savages ; and it rendered both 
man and beast ill-fitted to cope with their agile foes 
in any extremity, besides being a frightful burden in 
those tropic heats. The "artillery" of the times 
was almost as worthless as the ridiculous arquebuses. 
As to their treatment of the natives, there was incom- 
parably less cruelty suffered by the Indians who op- 
posed the Spaniards than by those who lay in the 
path of any other European colonizers. The Spanish 
did not obhterate any aboriginal nation, — as our 
ancestors obliterated scores, — but followed the first 
necessarily bloody lesson with humane education 



MAKING GEOGRAPHY. 53 

and care. Indeed, the actual Indian population of 
the Spanish possessions in America is larger to-day 
than it was at the time of the conquest ; and in that 
astounding contrast of conditions, and its lesson as 
to contrast of methods, is sufficient answer to the 
distorters of history. 

Before we come to the great conquerors, how- 
ever, we must outline the eventful career and tragic 
end of the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, Vasco 
Nuilez de Balboa. In one of the noblest poems in 
the English language we read, — 

"Like stout Cortes, when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise. 
Silent upon a peak in Darien." 

But Keats was mistaken. It was not Cortez who 
first saw the Pacific, but Balboa, — five years before 
Cortez came to the mainland of America at all. 

Balboa was born in the province of Estremadura, 
Spain, in 1475. In 15 01 he sailed with Bastidas for 
the New World, and then saw Darien, but settled on 
the island of Espanola. Nine years later he sailed 
to Darien with Enciso, and there remained. X-ife 
in the New World then was a troublous affair, and 
the first years of Balboa's Ufe there were eventful 
enough, though we must pass them over. Quarrels 
presently arose in the colony of Darien. Enciso 
was deposed and shipped back to Spain a prisoner, 
and Balboa took command. Enciso, upon his ar- 
rival in Spain, laid all the blame upon Balboa, and 
got him condemned by the king for high treason. 



54 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Learning of this, Balboa determined upon a master- 
stroke whose brilliancy should restore him to the 
royal favor. From the natives he had heard of the 
other ocean and of Peru, — neither yet seen by 
European eyes, — and made up his mind to find 
them. In September, 15 13, he sailed to Coyba 
with one hundred and ninety men, and from that 
point, with only ninety followers, tramped across 
the Isthmus to the Pacific, — for its length one of 
the most frightful journeys imaginable. It was on 
the 26th of September, 15 13, that from the summit 
of the divide the tattered, bleeding heroes looked 
down upon the blue infinity of the South Sea, — for 
it was not called the Pacific until long after. They 
descended to the coast ; and Balboa, wading out 
knee-deep into the new ocean, holding aloft in his 
right hand his slender sword, and in his left the 
proud flag of Spain, took solemn possession of the 
South Sea in the name of the King of Spain. 

The explorers got back to Darien Jan. 18, 15 14, 
and Balboa sent to Spain an account of his great 
discovery. But Pedro Arias de Avila had already 
sailed from the mother country to supplant him. 
At last, however, Balboa's brilliant news reached 
the king, who forgave him, and made him adelan- 
tado; and soon after he married the daughter of 
Pedro Arias. Still full of great plans, Balboa car- 
ried the necessary material across the Isthmus with 
infinite toil, and on the shores of the blue Pacific 
put together the first ships in the Americas, — two 
brigantines. With these he took possession of the 



MAKING GEOGRAPHY. 55 

Pearl Islands, and then started out to find Peru, but 
was driven back by storms to an ignoble fate. His 
father-in-law, becoming jealous of Balboa's brilliant 
prospects, enticed him back to Darien by a treach- 
erous message, seized him, and had him publicly 
executed, on the trumped-up charge of high treason, 
in 15 1 7. Balboa had in him the making of an ex- 
plorer of the first rank, and but for De Avila's 
shameless deed might probably have won even 
higher honors. His courage was sheer audacity, 
and his energy tireless ; but he was unwisely careless 
in his attitude toward the Crown. 



56 THE SPANISH PIONEERS, 



THE CHAPTER OF CONQUEST. 

WHILE the discoverer of the greatest ocean 
was still striving to probe its farther mys- 
teries, a handsome, athletic, brilliant young Span- 
iard, who was destined to make much more noise 
in history, was just beginning to be heard of on the 
threshold of America, of whose central kingdoms he 
was soon to be conqueror. 

Hernando Cortez came of a noble but impoverished 
Spanish family, and was born in Estremadura ten 
years later than Balboa. At the age of fourteen he 
was sent to the University of Salamanca to study for 
the law ; but the adventurous spirit of the man was 
already strong in the slender lad, and in a couple of 
years he left college, and went home determined 
upon a life of roving. The air was full of Columbus 
and his New World ; and what spirited youth could 
stay to pore in musty law-books then? Not the 
irrepressible Hernando, surely. 

Accidents prevented him from accompanying two 
expeditions for which he had made ready ; but at 
last, in 1504, he sailed to San Domingo, in which 
new colony of Spain he made such a record that 
Ovando, the commander, several times promoted 
him, and he earned the reputation of a model sol- 



THE CHAPTER OF CONQUEST. 57 

dier. In 1 5 1 1 he accompanied Velasquez to Cuba, 
and was made alcalde (judge) of Santiago, where he 
won further praise by his courage and firmness in 
several important crises. Meantime Francisco Her- 
nandez de Cordova, the discoverer of Yucatan, — a 
hero with this mere mention of whom we must 
content ourselves, — had reported his important 
discovery. A year later, Grijalva, the lieutenant of 
Velasquez, had followed Cordova's course, and gone 
farther north, until at last he discovered Mexico. 
He made no attempt, however, to conquer or to 
colonize the new land ; whereat Velasquez was so 
indignant that he threw Grijalva in disgrace, and 
intrusted the conquest to Cortez. The ambitious 
young Spaniard sailed from Santiago (Cuba) Nov. 
18, 15 18, with less than seven hundred men and 
twelve little cannon of the class called falconets. 
No sooner was he fairly off than Velasquez repented 
having given him such a chance for distinction, and 
directly sent out a force to arrest and bring him 
back. But Cortez was the idol of his little army, 
and secure in its fondness for him he bade defiance 
to the emissaries of Velasquez, and held on his way.^ 
He landed on the coast of Mexico March 4, 15 19, 
near where is now the city of Vera Cruz (the True 
Cross), which he founded, — the first European 
town on the mainland of America as far north as 
Mexico. 

1 This mutiny against Velasquez was the first hint of the 
unscrupulous man who was finally to turn complete traitor 
to Spain. 



58 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

The landing of the Spaniards caused as great a 
sensation as would the arrival in New York to-day 
of an army from Mars.^ The awe-struck natives 
had never before seen a horse (for it was the 
Spanish who brought the first horses, cattle, sheep, 
and other domestic animals to the New World), 
and decided that these strange, pale new-comers 
who sat on four- legged beasts, and had shirts of 
iron and sticks that made thunder, must indeed be 
gods. 

Here the adventurers were inflamed by golden 
stories of Montezuma, — a myth which befooled 
Cortez no more egregiously than it has befooled 
some modern historians, who seem unable to dis- 
criminate between what Cortez heard and what he 
found. He was told that Montezuma — whose name 
is properly Moctezuma, or Motecuzoma, meaning 
"Our Angry Chief" — was "emperor" of Mex- 
ico, and that thirty " kings," called caciques^ were 
his vassals; that he had incalculable wealth and 
absolute power, and dwelt in a blaze of gold and 
precious stones ! Even some most charming his- 
torians have fallen into the sad blunder of accept- 
ing these impossible myths. Mexico never had 
but two emperors, — Augustin de Iturbide and the 
hapless Maximilian, — both in this present century ; 
and Moctezuma was neither its emperor nor even 
its king. The social and political organization of 
the ancient Mexicans was exactly like that of the 

1 Tezozomoc, the Indian historian, graphically describes 
the wonder of the natives. 



THE CHAPTER OF CONQUEST. 59 

Pueblo Indians of New Mexico at the present day, 
— a military democracy, with a mighty and com- 
plicated religious organization as its " power behind 
the throne." Moctezuma was merely Tlacatecutle, 
or head war-chief of the Nahuatl (the ancient Mexi- 
cans), and neither the supreme nor the only execu- 
tive. Of just how Httle importance he really was 
may be gathered from his fate. 

Having founded Vera Cruz, Cortez caused him- 
self to be elected governor and captain-general (the 
highest military rank) ^ of the new country ; and 
having burned his ships, like the famous Greek com- 
mander, that there might be no retreat, he began 
his march into the grim wilderness before him. 

It was now that Cortez began to show particu- 
larly that military genius which lifted him so far 
above all other pioneers of America except Pizarro. 
With only a handful of men, — for he had left part 
of his forces at Vera Cruz, under his lieutenant 
Escalante, — in an unknown land swarming with 
powerful and savage foes, mere courage and brute 
force would have stood him in little stead. But 
with a diplomacy as rare as it was brilliant, he 
found the weak spots in the Indian organization, 
widened the jealous breaches between tribes, made 
allies of those who were secretly or openly opposed 
to Moctezuma's federation of tribes, — a league 
which somewhat resembled the Six Nations of our 
own history, — and thus vastly reduced the forces to 
be directly conquered. Having routed the tribes 0/ 

^ Another specific act of treason. 



6o THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Tlacala (pronounced Tlash-cah-lah) and Cholula, 
Cortez came at last to the strange lake- city of 
Mexico, with his little Spanish troop swelled by six 
thousand Indian allies. Moctezuma received him 
with great ceremony, but undoubtedly with treach- 
erous intent. While he was entertaining his visitors 
in one of the huge adobe houses, — not a " palace," 
as the histories tell us, for there were no palaces 
whatever in Mexico, — one of the sub-chiefs of his 
league attacked Escalante's little garrison at Vera 
Cruz and killed several Spaniards, including Esca- 
lante himself. The head of the Spanish lieutenant 
was sent to the City of Mexico, — for the Indians 
south of what is now the United States took not 
merely the scalp but the whole head of an enemy. 
This was a direful disaster, not so much for the loss of 
the few men as because it proved to the Indians (as 
the senders intended it to prove) that the Spaniards 
were not immortal gods after all, but could be killed 
the same as other men. 

As soon as Cortez heard the ill news he saw this 
danger at once, and made a bold stroke to save 
himself. He had already strongly fortified the 
adobe building in which the Spaniards were quar- 
tered ; and now, going by night with his officers to 
the house of the head war-captain, he seized Mocte- 
zuma and threatened to kill him unless he at once 
gave up the Indians who had attacked Vera Cruz. 
Moctezuma delivered them up, and Cortez at once 
had them burned in public. This was a cruel thing, 
though it was undoubtedly necessary to make some 



THE CHAPTER OF CONQUEST 6 1 

vivid impression on the savages or be at once and 
nihilated by them. There is no apology for this 
barbarity, yet it is only just that we measure Cortez 
by the standard of his time, — and it was a very 
cruel world everywhere then. 

It is amusing here to read in pretentious text- 
books that " Cortez now ironed Montezuma and 
made him pay a ransom of six hundred thousand 
marks of pure gold and an immense quantity of 
precious stones." That is on a par with the impos- 
sible fables which lured so many of the early Span- 
iards to disappointment and death, and is a fair 
sample of the gilded glamour with which equally 
credulous historians still surround early America. 
Moctezuma did not buy himself free, — he never was 
free again, — and he paid no ransom of gold ; while 
as for precious stones, he may have had a few native 
garnets and worthless green turquoises, and perhaps 
even an emerald pebble, but nothing more. 

Just at this crisis in the affairs of Cortez he was 
threatened from another quarter. News came that 
Pamfilo de Narvaez, of whom we shall see more 
presently, had landed with eight hundred men to 
arrest Cortez and carry him back prisoner for his 
disobedience of Velasquez. But here again the 
genius of the conqueror of Mexico saved him. 
Marching against Narvaez with one hundred and 
forty men, he arrested Narvaez, enlisted under his 
own banner the welcome eight hundred who had 
come to arrest him, and hastened back to the City 
of Mexico. 



62 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Here he found matters growing daily to more 
deadly menace. Alvarado, whom he had left in 
command, had apparently precipitated trouble by 
attacking an Indian dance. Wanton as that may 
seem and has been charged with being, it was only 
a military necessity, recognized by all who really 
know the aborigines even to this day. The closet- 
explorers have pictured the Spaniards as wickedly 
falling upon an 2i}oox\%\Vid\ festival ; but that is sim- 
ply because of ignorance of the subject. An Indian 
dance is not a festival ; it is generally, and was in 
this case, a grim rehearsal for murder. An Indian 
never dances "for fun," and his dances too often 
mean anything but fun for other people. In a word, 
Alvarado, seeing in progress a dance which was 
plainly only the superstitious prelude to a massacre, 
had tried to arrest the medicine-men and other 
ringleaders. Had he succeeded, the trouble would 
have been over for a time at least. But the Indians 
were too numerous for his little force, and the chief 
instigators of war escaped. 

When Cortez came back with his eight hundred 
strangely-acquired recruits, he found the whole city 
with its mask thrown off, and his men penned up 
in their barracks. The savages quietly let Cortez 
enter the trap, and then closed it so that there was 
no more getting out. There were the few hundred 
Spaniards cooped up in their prison, and the four 
dykes which were the only approaches to it — for the 
City of Mexico was an American Venice — swarm- 
ing with savage foes by the countless thousands. 



THE CHAPTER OP CONQUEST. ()^ 

The Indian makes very few excuses for failure ; 
and the Nahuatl had already elected a new head 
war-captain named Cuitlahuatzin in place of the 
unsuccessful Moctezuma. The latter was still a 
prisoner; and when the Spaniards brought him 
out upon the house-top to speak to his people in 
their behalf, the infuriated multitude of Indians 
pelted him to death with stones. Then, under 
their new war-captain, they attacked the Spaniards 
so furiously that neither the strong walls nor the 
clumsy falconets, and clumsier flintlocks, could 
withstand them ; and there was nothing for the 
Spaniards but to cut their way out along one of the 
dykes in a last desperate struggle for life. The 
beginning of that six days' retreat was one of the 
bitterest pages in American history. Then was the 
Noche Triste (the Sad Night), still celebrated in 
Spanish song and story. For that dark night many 
a proud home in mother Spain was never bright 
again, and many a fond heart broke with the crim- 
son bubbles on the Lake of Tezcuco. In those few 
ghastly hours two thirds of the conquerors were 
slain ; and across more than eight hundred Spanish 
corpses the frenzied savages pursued the bleeding 
survivors. 

After a fearful retreat of six days, came the impor- 
tant running fight in the plains of Otumba, where 
the Spaniards were entirely surrounded, but cut 
their way out after a desperate hand-to-hand strug- 
gle which really decided the fate of Mexico. Cor- 
tez marched to Tlacala, raised an army of Indians 



64 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

who were hostile to the federation, and with their 
help laid siege to the City of Mexico. This siege 
lasted seventy-three days, and was the most remark- 
able in the history of all America. There was hard 
fighting every day. The Indians made a superb 
defence ; but at last the genius of Cortez triumphed, 
and on the 13th of August, 15 21, he marched vic- 
torious into the second greatest aboriginal city in 
the New World. 

These wonderful exploits of Cortez, so briefly 
outlined here, awoke boundless admiration in Spain, 
and caused the Crown to overlook his insubordina- 
tion to Velasquez. The complaints of Velasquez 
were disregarded, and Charles V. appointed Cortez 
governor and captain-general of Mexico, besides 
making him Marquis de Oaxaca with a handsome 
revenue. 

Safely established in this high authority, Cortez 
crushed a plot against him, and executed the new 
war-captain, with many of the caciques (who were 
not potentates at all, but religious-military officers, 
whose hold on the superstitions of the Indians made 
them dangerous). 

But Cortez, whose genius shone only the brighter 
when the difficulties and dangers before him seemed 
insurmountable, tripped up on that which has thrown 
so many, — success. Unlike his unlearned but nobler 
and greater cousin Pizarro, prosperity spoiled him, 
and turned his head and his heart. Despite the 
unstudious criticisms of some historians, Cortez was 
not a cruel conqueror. He was not only a great 



THE CHAPTER OF CONQUEST. 65 

military genius, but was very merciful to the Indians, 
and was much beloved by them. The so-called 
massacre at Cholula was not a blot on his career as 
has been alleged. The truth, as vindicated at last 
by real history, is this : The Indians had treach- 
erously drawn him into a trap under pretext ol 
friendship. Not until too late to retreat did he learn 
that the savages meant to massacre him. When he 
did see his danger, there was but one chance, — 
namely, to surprise the surprisers, to strike them 
before they were ready to strike him ; and this is 
only what he did. Cholula was simply a case of 
the biter bitten. 

No, Cortez was not cruel to the Indians ; but as 
soon as his rule was established he became a cruel 
tyrant to his own countrymen, a traitor to his friends 
and even to his king, — and, worst of all, a cool 
assassin. There is strong evidence that he had 
" removed " several persons who were in the way of 
his unholy ambitions ; and the crowning infamy 
was in the fate of his own wife. Cortez had long 
for a mistress the handsome Indian girl Malinche ; 
but after he had conquered Mexico, his lawful wife 
came to the country to share his fortunes. He did 
not love her, however, as much as he did his ambi- 
tion ; and she was in his way. At last she was found 
in her bed one morning, strangled to death. 

Carried away by his ambition, he actually plotted 

open rebellion against Spain and to make himself 

emperor of Mexico. The Crown got wind of this 

precious plan, and sent out emissaries who seized 

S 



66 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

his goods, imprisoned his men, and prepared to 
thwart his secret schemes. Cortez boldly hastened 
to Spain, where he met his sovereign with great 
splendor. Charles received him well, and deco- 
rated him with the illustrious Order of Santiago, the 
patron saint of Spain. But his star was already 
declining ; and though he was allowed to return to 
Mexico with undiminished outward power, he was 
thenceforth watched, and did nothing more that was 
comparable with his wonderful earlier achievements. 
He had become too unscrupulous, too vindictive, 
and too unsafe to be left in authority ; and after a 
few years the Crown was forced to appoint a vice- 
roy to wield the civil power of Mexico, leaving to 
Cortez only the military command, and permission 
for further conquests. In 1536 Cortez discovered 
Lower California, and explored part of its gulf. At 
last, disgusted with his inferior position where he 
had once been supreme, he returned to Spain, where 
the emperor received him coldly. In 1541 he ac- 
companied his sovereign to Algiers as an attach^, 
and in the wars there acquitted himself well. Soon 
after their return to Spain, however, he found him- 
self neglected. It is said that one day when Charles 
was riding in state, Cortez forced his way to the 
royal carriage and mounted upon the step deter- 
mined to force recognition. 

"Who are you? " demanded the angry emperor. 

"A man, your Highness," retorted the haughty 
conqueror of Mexico, " who has given you more 
provinces than your forefathers left you cities ! " 



THE CHAPTER OP CONQUEST. 67 

Whether the story is true or not, it graphically 
illustrates the arrogance as well as the services of 
Cortez. He lacked the modest balance of the 
greatest greatness, just as Columbus had lacked it. 
The self-assertion of either would have been impos- 
sible to the greater man than either, — the self- 
possessed Pizarro. 

At last, in disgust, Cortez retired from court ; and 
on the 2d of December, 1554, the man who had 
first opened the interior of America to the world 
died near Seville. 

There were some in South America whose achieve- 
ments were as wondrous as those of Cortez in Mex- 
ico. The conquest of the two continents was prac- 
tically contemporaneous, and equally marked by the 
highest military genius, the most dauntless courage, 
the overcoming of dangers which were appalling, and 
hardships which were wellnigh superhuman. 

Francisco Pizarro, the unlettered but invincible 
conqueror of Peru, was fifteen years older than his 
brilliant cousin Cortez, and was born in the same 
province of Spain. He began to be heard of in 
America in 15 10. From 1524 to 1532 he was 
making superhuman efforts to get to the unknown 
and golden land of Peru, overcoming such obstacles 
as not even Columbus had encountered, and endur- 
ing greater dangers and hardships than Napoleon or 
Caesar ever met. From 1532 to his death in 1541, 
he was busy in conquering and exploring that enor- 
mous area, and founding a new nation amid its 
fierce tribes, — fighting off not only the vast hordes 



eS THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

of Indians, but also the desperate men of his own 
forces, by whose treachery he at last perished. 
Pizarro found and tamed the richest country in the 
New World ; and with all his unparalleled sufferings 
still realized, more than any other of the conquer- 
ors, the golden dreams which all pursued. Prob- 
ably no other conquest in the world's history yielded 
such rapid and bewildering wealth, as certainly none 
was bought more dearly in hardship and heroism. 
Pizarro's conquest has been most unjustly dealt with 
by some historians ignorant of the real facts in the 
case, and Winded by prejudice; but that marvellous 
story, told in detail farther on, is coming to its 
proper rank as one of the most stupendous and 
gallant feats in all history. It is the story of a hero 
to whom every true American, young or old, will be 
glad to do justice. Pizarro has been long misrep- 
resented as a blood-stained and cruel conqueror, a 
selfish, unprincipled, unreliable man; but in the 
clear, true light of real history he stands forth now 
as one of the greatest of self-made men, and one 
who, considering his chances, deserves the utmost 
respect and admiration for the man he made of 
himself. The conquest of Peru did not by far 
cause as much bloodshed as the final reduction of 
the Indian tribes of Virginia. It counted scarcely 
as many Indian victims as King Philip's War, and 
was much less bloody, because more straightforward 
and honorable, than any of the British conquests in 
East India. The most bloody events in Peru came 
after the conquest was over, when the Spaniards 



THE CHAPTER OP CONQUEST. 69 

fell to fighting one another ; and in this Pizarro was 
not the aggressor but the victim. It was the treach- 
ery of his own allies, — the men whose fames and for- 
tunes he had made. His conquest covered a land 
as big as California, Oregon, and most of Washing- 
ton, — or as our whole seaboard from Nova Scotia 
to Port Royal and two hundred miles inland, — 
swarming with the best organized and most advanced 
Indians in the Western Hemisphere ; and he did it 
all with less than three hundred gaunt and tattered 
men. He was one of the great captains of all 
time, and almost as remarkable as organizer and 
executive of a new empire, the first on the Pacific 
shore of the southern continent. To this greatness 
rose the friendless, penniless, ignorant swineherd of 
Truxillo ! 

Pedro de Valdivia, the conqueror of Chile, sub- 
dued that vast area of the deadly Araucanians with 
an "army " of two hundred men. He established the 
first colony in Chile in 1540, and in the following 
February founded the present city of Santiago de 
Chile. Of his long and deadly wars with the Arau- 
canians there is not space to speak here. Pie was 
killed by the savages Dec. 3, 1553, with nearly all 
his men, after an indescribably desperate struggle. 

There is not space to tell here of the wondrous do- 
ings in the southern continent or the lower point of 
this, — the conquest of Nicaragua by Gil Gonzales 
Davila in 1523 ; the conquest of Guatemala, by Pedro 
de Alvarado, in 1524 ; that of Yucatan by Francisco 
de Montijo, beginning in 1526 ; that of New Granada 



70 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

by Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada, in 1536 ; the con- 
quests and exploration of Bolivia, the Amazon, and 
the Orinoco (to whose falls the Spaniards had pene- 
trated by 1530, by almost superhuman efforts) ; the 
unparalleled Indian wars with the Araucanians in 
Chile (for two centuries), with the Tarrahumares in 
Chihuahua, the Tepehuanes in Durango, the still un- 
tamed Yaquis in northwestern Mexico ; the exploits 
of Captain Martin de Hurdaide (the Daniel Boone 
of Sinaloa and Sonora) ; and of hundreds of other 
unrecorded Spanish heroes, who would have been 
world-renowned had they been more accessible to 
the fame- maker. 



A GIRDLE ROUND THE WORLD. jt 



VI. 

A GIRDLE ROUND THE WORLD. 

BEFORE Cortez had yet conquered Mexico, 
or Pizarro or Valdivia seen the lands with 
which their names were to be Hnked for all time, 
other Spaniards — less conquerors, but as great 
explorers — were rapidly shaping the geography of 
the New World. France, too, had aroused some- 
what; and in 1500 her brave son Captain de 
Gonneville sailed to Brazil. But between him and 
the next pioneer, who was a Florentine in French 
pay, was a gap of twenty-four years; and in that 
time Spain had accomplished four most important 
feats. 

Fernao Magalhaes, whom we know as Ferdinand 
Magellan, was born in Portugal in 1470; and 
on reaching manhood adopted the seafaring Hfe, 
to which his adventurous disposition prompted. 
The Old World was then ringing with the New; 
and Magellan longed to explore the Americas. 
Being very shabbily treated by the King of Por- 
tugal, he enUsted under the banner of Spain, where 
his talents found recognition. He sailed from Spain 
in command of a Spanish expedition, August 10, 
1 5 19; and steering farther south than ever man 



^2 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

had sailed before, he discovered Cape Horn, and 
the Straits which bear his name. Fate did not 
spare him to carry his discoveries farther, nor to 
reap the reward of those he had made ; for during 
this voyage (in 15 21) he was butchered by the 
natives of one of the islands of the Moluccas. His 
heroic lieutenant, Juan Sebastian de Elcano, then 
took command, and continued the voyage until he 
had circumnavigated the globe for the first time in 
its history. Upon his return to Spain, the Crown 
rewarded his brilliant achievements, and gave him, 
among other honors, a coat-of-arms emblazoned 
with a globe and the motto, Tu primum circum- 
dedisti me, — " Thou first didst go around me." 

Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida, — 
the first State of our Union that was seen by Euro- 
peans, — was as ill-fated an explorer as Magellan ; 
for he came to "■ the Flowery Land " (to which he 
had been lured by the wild myth of a fountain of 
perennial youth) only to be slain by its savages. 
De Leon was born in San Servas, Spain, in the 
latter part of the fifteenth century. He was the 
conqueror of the island of Puerto Rico, and sailing 
in 1 5 1 2 to find Florida, — of which he had heard 
through the Indians, — discovered the new land in 
the same year, and took possession of it for Spain. 
He was given the tide of adelantado of Florida, 
and in 15 21 returned with three ships to conquer 
his new country, but was at once wounded mortally 
in a fight with the Indians, and died on his return 
to Cuba. He, by the way, was one of the bold 



A GIRDLE ROUND THE WORLD. 



73 



Spaniards who accompanied Columbus on his sec- 
ond voyage to America, in 1493. 

More of the credit of Florida belongs to Her- 
nando de Soto. That gallant conquistador was born 
in Estremadura, Spain, about 1496. Pedro Arias 
de Avila took a liking to his bright young kinsman, 
helped him to obtain a university education, and in 
15 19 took him along on his expedition to Darien. 
De Soto won golden opinions in the New World, 
and came to be trusted as a prudent yet fearless 
officer. In 1528 he commanded an expedition to 
explore the coast of Guatemala and Yucatan, and 
in 1532 led a reinforcement of three hundred men 
to assist Pizarro in the conquest of Peru. In that 
golden land De Soto captured great wealth ; and the 
young soldier of fortune, who had landed in America 
with no more than his sword and shield, returned to 
Spain with what was in those days an enormous 
fortune. There he married a daughter of his bene- 
factor De Avila, and thus became brother-in-law 
of the dis- 
coverer of 
the Pacific, 
— Balboa. 
De Soto lent 
part of his 
soon-earned 
fortune to 

Charles V., whose constant wars had drained the 
royal coffers, and Charles sent him out as governor 
of Cuba and adelantado of the new province of 




Autograph of Hernando de Soto. 



74 



THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



Florida. He sailed in 1538 with an army of six hun- 
dred men, richly equipped, — a company of adven- 
turous Spaniards attracted to the banner of their 
famous countryman by the desire for discovery and 
gold. The expedition landed in Florida, at Espiritu 
Santo Bay, in May, 1539, and re-took possession of 
the unguessed wilderness for Spain. 

But the brilliant success which had attended De 
Soto in the highlands of Peru seemed to desert him 
altogether in the swamps of Florida. It is note- 
worthy that nearly all the explorers who did wonders 
in South America failed when their operations were 
transferred to the northern continent. The physical 
geography of the two was so absolutely unlike, that, 
after becoming accustomed to the necessities of the 
one, the explorer seemed unable to adapt himself to 
the contrary conditions of the other. 

De Soto and his men wandered through the 
southern part of what is now the United States for 
four ghastly years. It is probable that their travels 
took them through the present States of Florida, 
Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, 
and the northeastern corner of Texas. In 1541 
they reached the Mississippi River ; and theirs were 
the first European eyes to look upon the Father of 
Waters, anywhere save at its mouth, — a century and 
a quarter before the heroic Frenchmen Marquette 
and La Salle saw it. They spent that winter along 
the Washita; and in the early summer of 1542, as 
they were returning down the Mississippi, brave De 
Soto died, and his body was laid to rest in the 
bosom of the mighty river he had discovered, — two 



A GIRDLE ROUND THE WORLD. 75 

centuries before any " American " saw it. His suf- 
fering and disheartened men passed a frightful 
winter there; and in 1543, under command of the 
Lieutenant Moscoso, they built rude vessels, and 
sailed down the Mississippi to the Gulf in nineteen 
days, — the first navigation in our part of America. 
From the Delta they made their way westward along 
the coast, and at last reached Panuco, Mexico, after 
such a five years of hardship and suffering as no 
Saxon explorer of America ever experienced. It 
was nearly a century and a half after De Soto's 
gaunt army of starving men had taken Louisiana 
for Spain that it became a French possession, — 
which the United States bought from France over a 
century later yet. 

So when Verazzano — the Florentine sent out by 
France — reached America in 1524, coasted the 
Atlantic seaboard from somewhere about South 
Carolina to Newfoundland, and gave the world a 
short description of what he saw, Spain had circum- 
navigated the globe, reached the southern tip of the 
New World, conquered a vast territory, and discov- 
ered at least half-a-dozen of our present States, since 
the last visit of a Frenchman to America. As for 
England, she was almost as unheard of still on this 
side of the earth as though she had never existed. 

Between De Leon and De Soto, Florida was 
visited in 15 18 by Francisco de Garay, the con- 
queror of Tampico. He came to subdue the 
Flowery Land, but failed, and died soon after in 
Mexico, — the probability being that he was poi- 
soned by order of Cortez. He left even less mark 



76 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

on Florida than did De Leon, and belongs to the 
class of Spanish explorers who, though real heroes, 
achieved unimportant results, and are too numerous 
to be even catalogued here. 

In 1527 there sailed from Spain the most disas- 
trous expedition which was ever sent to the New 
World, — an expedition notable but for two things, 
that it was perhaps the saddest in history, and that 
it brought the man who first of all men crossed the 
American continent, and indeed made one of the 
most wonderful walks since the world began. Panfilo 
de Narvaez — who had so ignominiously failed in his 
attempt to arrest Cortez — was commander, with 
authority to conquer Florida ; and his treasurer was 
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. In 1528 the company 
landed in Florida, and forthwith began a record 
of horror that makes the blood run cold. Ship- 
wreck, savages, and starvation made such havoc with 
the doomed band that when in 1529 Vaca and three 
companions found themselves slaves to the Indians 
they were the sole survivors of the expedition. 

Vaca and his companions wandered from Florida 
to the Gulf of California, suffering incredible dan- 
gers and tortures, reaching there after a wandering 
which lasted over eight years. Vaca's heroism was 
rewarded. The king made him governor of Para- 
guay in 1540 ; but he was as unfit for such a post as 
Columbus had been for a viceroy, and soon came 
back in irons to Spain, where he died. 

But it was through his accounts of what he saw in 
that astounding journey (for Vaca was an educated 



A GIRDLE ROUND THE WORLD. 77 

man, and has left us two very interesting and valuable 
books) that his countrymen were roused to begin in 
earnest the exploration and colonization of what is 
now the United States, — to build the first cities and 
till the first farms of the greatest nation on earth. 

The thirty years following the conquest of Mexico 
by Cortez saw an astounding change in the New 
World. They were brimful of wonders. Brilliant 
discovery, unparalleled exploration, gallant conquest, 
and heroic colonization followed one another in a 
bewildering rush, — and but for the brave yet lim- 
ited exploits of the Portuguese in South America, 
Spain was all alone in it. From Kansas to Cape 
Horn was one vast Spanish possession, save parts of 
Brazil where the Portuguese hero Cabral had taken 
a joint foothold for his country. Hundreds of 
Spanish towns had been built ; Spanish schools, 
universities, printing-presses, books, and churches 
were beginning their work of enlightenment in the 
dark continents of America, and the tireless follow- 
ers of Santiago were still pressing on. America, 
particularly Mexico, was being rapidly settled by 
Spaniards. The growth of the colonies was very 
remarkable for those times, — that is, where there 
were any resources to support a growing population. 
The city of Puebla, for instance, in the Mexican 
State of the same name, was founded in 1532 and 
began with thirty- three settlers. In 1678 it had 
eighty thousand people, which is twenty thousand 
more than New York city had one hundred and 
twenty-two years later. 



y8 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



VII. 

SPAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. 

CORTEZ was still captain-general when Cabeza de 
Vaca came into the Spanish settlements from 
his eight years' wandering, with news of strange 
countries to the north ; but Antonio de Mendoza was 
viceroy of Mexico, and Cortez' superior, and between 
him and the traitorous conqueror was endless dis- 
sension. Cortez was working for himself, Mendoza 
for Spain. 

As Mexico became more and more thickly dotted 
with Spanish settlements, the attention of the restless 
world-finders began to wander toward the mysteries 
of the vast and unknown country to the north. The 
strange things Vaca had seen, and the stranger ones he 
had heard, could not fail to excite the dauntless rovers 
to whom he told them. Indeed, within a year after 
the arrival in Mexico of the first transcontinental 
traveller, two more of our present States were found 
by his countrymen as the direct result of his narra- 
tives. And now we come to one of the best-slan- 
dered men of them all, — Fray Marcos de Nizza, the 
discoverer of Arizona and New Mexico. 

Fray (brother) Marcos was a native of the province 
of Nizza, then a part of Savoy, and must have come to 



SPAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. 79 

America in 1531. He accompanied Pizarro to 
Peru, and thence finally returned to Mexico. He 
was the first to explore the unknown lands of which 
Vaca had heard such wonderful reports from the 
Indians, though he had never seen them himself, — 
" the Seven Cities of Cibola, full of gold," and 
countless other marvels. Fray Marcos started on 
foot from Culiacan (in Sinaloa, on the western edge 
of Mexico) in the spring of 1539, with the negro 
Estevanico, who had been one of Vaca's compan- 
ions, and a few Indians. A lay brother, Onorato, 
who started with him, fell sick at once and went no 
farther. Now, here was a genuine Spanish explo- 
ration, a fair sample of hundreds, — this fearless 
priest, unarmed, with a score of unreliable men, 
starting on a year's walk through a desert where 
even in this day of railroads and highways and 
trails and developed water men yearly lose their 
lives by thirst, to say nothing of the thousands 
who have been killed there by Indians. But trifles 
like these only whetted the appetite of the Spaniard ; 
and Fray Marcos kept his footsore way, until early in 
June, 1539, he actually came to the Seven Cities of 
Cibola. These were in the extreme west of New 
Mexico, around the present strange Indian pueblo 
of Zuni, which is all that is left of those famous 
cities, and is itself to-day very much as the hero- 
priest saw it three hundred and fifty years ago. At 
the foot of the wonderful cliff of Toyallahnah, the 
sacred thunder mountain of Zuni, the negro Este- 
vanico was killed by the Indians, and Fray Marcos 



8o THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

escaped a similar fate only by a hasty retreat. He 
learned what he could of the strange terraced towns 
of which he got a glimpse, and returned to Mexico 
with great news. He has been accused of misrepre- 
sentation and exaggeration in his reports ; but if his 
critics had not been so ignorant of the locality, of 
the Indians and of their traditions, they never would 
have spoken. Fray Marcos's statements were abso- 
lutely truthful. 

When the good priest told his story, we may be 
sure that there was a pricking-up of ears through- 
out New Spain (the general Spanish name then for 
Mexico) ; and as soon as ever an armed expedition 
could be fitted out, it started for the Seven Cities 
of Cibola, with Fray Marcos himself as guide. Of 
that expedition you shall hear in a moment. Fray 
Marcos accompanied it as far as Zufii, and then 
returned to Mexico, being sadly crippled by rheu- 
matism, from which he never fully recovered. He 
died in the convent in the City of Mexico, March 

25. 1558. 

The man whom Fray Marcos led to the Seven 
Cities of Cibola was the greatest explorer that ever 
trod the northern continent, though his explorations 
brought to himself only disaster and bitterness, — 
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. A native of Sala- 
manca, Spain, Coronado was young, ambitious, and 
already renowned. He was governor of the Mex- 
ican province of New Galicia when the news of the 
Seven Cities came. Mendoza, against the strong 
opposition of Cortez, decided upon a move which 



SPAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. 8 1 

would rid the country of a few hundred darmg 
young Spanish blades with whom peace did not at 
all agree, and at the same time conquer new coun- 
tries for the Crown. So he gave Coronado com- 
mand of an expedition of about two hundred and 
fifty Spaniards to colonize the lands which Fray 
Marcos had discovered, with strict orders never to 
come back ! 

Coronado and his little army left Culiacan early in 
1540. Guided by the tireless priest they reached 
Zuni in July, and took the pueblo after a sharp fight, 
which was the end of hostilities there. Thence 
Coronado sent small expeditions to the strange 
cliff-built pueblos of Moqui (in the northeastern part 
of Arizona), to the grand canon of the Colorado, 
and to the pueblo of Jemez in northern New Mex- 
ico. That winter he moved his whole command 
to Tiguex, where is now the pretty New Mexican 
village of Bernalillo, on the Rio Grande, and there 
had a serious and discreditable war with the Tigua 
Pueblos. 

It was here that he heard that golden myth which 
lured him to frightful hardships, and hundreds since 
to death, — the fable of the Quivira. This, so 
Indians from the vast plains assured him, was an 
Indian city where all was pure gold. In the spring 
of 1 54 1 Coronado and his men started in quest of 
the Quivira, and marched as far across those awful 
plains as the centre of our present Indian territory. 
Here, seeing that he had been deceived, Coronado 
sent back his army to Tiguex, and himself with 
6 



82 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

thirty men pushed on across the Arkansas River, 
and as far as northeastern Kansas, — that is, three- 
fourths of the way from the Gulf of CaUfornia to 
New York, and by his circuitous route much 
farther. 

There he found the tribe of the Quiviras, — 
roaming savages who chased the buffalo, — but they 
neither had gold nor knew where it was. Coronado 
got back at last to Bernalillo, after an absence of 
three months of incessant marching and awful hard- 
ships. Soon after his return, he was so seriously 
injured by a fall from his horse that his life was in 
great danger. He passed the crisis, but his health 
was wrecked ; and disheartened by his broken body 
and by the unredeemed disappointments of the 
forbidding land he had hoped to settle, he gave up 
all hope of colonizing New Mexico, and in the 
summer of 1542 returned to Mexico with his men. 
His disobedience to the viceroy in coming back 
cast him into disgrace, and he passed the remainder 
of his life in comparative obscurity. 

This was a sad end for the remarkable man who 
had found out so many thousands of miles of the 
thirsty Southwest nearly three centuries before any 
of our blood saw any of it, — a well-born, college- 
bred, ambitious, and dashing soldier, and the idol of 
his troops. As an explorer he stands unequalled, 
but as a colonizer he utterly failed. He was a city- 
bred man, and no frontiersman ; and being accus- 
tomed only to Jalisco and the parts of Mexico which 
lie along the Gulf of California, he knew nothing of, 



SPAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. 83 

and could not adapt himself to, the fearful deserts 
of Arizona and New Mexico. It was not until half 
a century later, when there came a Spaniard who 
was a bom frontiersman of the arid lands, that New 
Mexico was successfully colonized. 

While the discoverer of the Indian Territory and 
Kansas was chasing a golden fable across their des- 
olate plains, his countrymen had found and were 
exploring another of our States, — our golden garden 
of California. Hernando de Alarcon, in 1540, sailed 
up the Colorado River to a great distance from the 
gulf, probably as far as Great Bend; and in 1543 
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo explored the Pacific coast 
of California to a hundred miles north of where 
San Francisco was to be founded more than three 
centuries later. 

After the discouraging discoveries of Coronado, 
the Spaniards for many years paid little attention to 
New Mexico. There was enough doing in Mexico 
itself to keep even that indomitable Spanish energy 
busy for awhile in the civilizing of their new empire. 
Fray Pedro de Gante had founded in Mexico, in 
1524, the first schools in the New World ; and there- 
after every church and convent in Spanish America 
had always a school for the Indians attached. In 
1524 there was not a single Indian in Mexico's 
countless thousands who knew what letters were; 
but twenty years later such large numbers of them 
had learned to read and write that Bishop Zumarraga 
had a book made for them in their own language. 
By 1543 there were even industrial schools for the 



84 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Indians in Mexico. It was this same good Bishop 
Zumarraga who brought the first printing-press to 
the New World, in 1536. It was set up in the 
City of Mexico, and was soon very actively at work. 
The oldest book printed in America that remains 
to us came from that press in 1539. A majority 
of the first books printed there were to make the 
Indian languages intelligible, — a policy of humane 
scholarship which no other nation colonizing in the 
New World ever copied. The first music printed in 
America came from this press in 1584. 

The most striking thing of all, as showing the 
scholarly attitude of the Spaniards toward the new 
continents, was a result entirely unique. Not only 
did their intellectual activity breed among them- 
selves a galaxy of eminent writers, but in a very 
few years there was a school of important Indian 
authors. It would be an irreparable loss to knowl- 
edge of the true history of America if we were to 
lose the chronicles of such Indian writers as Tezo- 
zomoc, Camargo, and Pomar, in Mexico; Juan de 
Santa Cruz, Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua, in Peru ; 
and many others. And what a gain to science if 
we had taken pains to raise up our own aborigines 
to such helpfulness to themselves and to human 
knowledge ! 

In all other enlightened pursuits which the world 
then knew, Spain's sons were making remarkable 
progress here. In geography, natural history, natu- 
ral philosophy, and other sciences they were as 
truly the pioneers of America as they had been in 



SPAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. 85 

discovery. It is a startling fact that so early as 
1579 a public autopsy on the body of an Indian was 
held at the University of Mexico, to determine the 
nature of an epidemic which was then devastating 
New Spain. It is doubtful if by that time they had 
got so far in London itself. And in still extant books 
of the same period we find plans for repeating fire- 
arms, and a plain hint of the telephone ! The 
first printing-press did not reach the English col- 
onies of America until 1638, — nearly one hundred 
years behind Mexico. The whole world came very 
slowly to newspapers ; and the first authentic news- 
paper in its history was published in Germany in 
16 1 5. The first one in England began in 1622; 
and the American colonies never had one until 1 704. 
The " Mercurio Volante " (Flying Mercury), a pam- 
phlet which printed news, was running in the City of 
Mexico before 1693. 

When the ill reports of Coronado had largely been 
forgotten, there began another Spanish movement 
into New Mexico and Arizona. In the mean time 
there had been very important doings in Florida. 
The many failures in that unlucky land had not 
deterred the Spaniards from further attempts to 
colonize it. At last, in 1560, the first permanent 
foothold was effected there by Aviles de Menendez, 
a brutal Spaniard, who nevertheless had the honor 
of founding and naming the oldest city in the United 
States, — St. Augustine, 1560. Menendez found 
there a little colony of French-Huguenots, who had 
wandered thither the year before under Ribault; 



86 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

and those whom he captured he hanged, with a 
placard saying that they were executed "not as 
Frenchmen, but as heretics." Two years later, the 
French expedition of Dominique de Gourges cap- 
tured the three Spanish forts which had been built 
there, and hanged the colonists " not as Spaniards, 
but as assassins," — which was a very neat revenge 
in rhetoric, if an unpraiseworthy one in deed. In 
1586 Sir Francis Drake, whose piratical proclivities 
have already been alluded to, destroyed the friendly 
colony of St. Augustine ; but it was at once rebuilt. 
In 1763 Florida was ceded to Great Britain by 
Spain, in exchange for Havana, which Albemarle 
had captured the year before. 

It is also interesting to note that the Spaniards 
had been to Virginia nearly thirty years before Sit 
Walter Raleigh's attempt to establish a colony there, 
and full half a century before Capt. John Smith's 
visit. As early as 1556 Chesapeake Bay was known 
to the Spaniards as the Bay of Santa Maria; and 
an unsuccessful expedition had been sent to colo- 
nize the country. 

In 1 58 1 three Spanish missionaries — Fray Agostin 
Rodriguez, Fray Francisco Lopez, and Fray Juan de 
Santa Maria — started from Santa Barbara, Chihua- 
hua (Mexico), with an escort of nine Spanish soldiers 
under command of Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado. 
They trudged up along the Rio Grande to where Ber- 
nalillo now is, — a walk of a thousand miles. There 
the missionaries remained to teach the gospel, while 
the soldiers explored the country as far as Zuni, and 



SPAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. 87 

then returned to Santa Barbara. Chamuscado died 
on the way. As for the brave missionaries who had 
been left behind in the wilderness, they soon became 
martyrs. Fray Santa Maria was slain by the Indians 
near San Pedro, while trudging back to Mexico alone 
that fall. Fray Rodriguez and Fray Lopez were 
assassinated by their treacherous flock at Puaray, in 
December, 1581. 

In the following year Antonio de Espejo, a wealthy 
native of Cordova, started from Santa Barbara in 
Chihuahua, with fourteen men to face the deserts 
and the savages of New Mexico. He marched 
up the Rio Grande to some distance above where 
Albuquerque now stands, meeting no opposition 
from the Pueblo Indians. He visited their cities of 
Zia, Jemez, lofty Acoma, Zuni, and far-off Moqui, 
and travelled a long way out into northern Arizona. 
Returning to the Rio Grande, he visited the pueblo 
of Pecos, went down the Pecos River into Texas, and 
thence crossed back to Santa Barbara. He intended 
to return and colonize New Mexico, but his death 
(probably in 1585) ended these plans; and the only 
important result of his gigantic journey was an addi- 
tion to the geographical and ethnological knowledge 
of the day. 

In 1590 Gaspar Castano de Sosa, lieutenant- 
governor of New Leon, was so anxious to explore 
New Mexico that he made an expedition without 
leave from the viceroy. He came up the Pecos 
River and crossed to the Rio Grande ; and at the 
pueblo of Santo Domingo was arrested by Captain 



88 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Morlette, who had come all the way from Mexico 
on that sole errand, and carried home in irons. 

Juan de Oiiate, the colonizer of New Mexico, 
and founder of the second town within the limits 
of the United States, as well as of the city 
which is now our next oldest, was born in Zaca- 
tecas, Mexico. His family (which came from Bis- 
cay) had discovered (in 1548) and now owned 
some of the richest mines in the world, — those 
of Zacatecas. But despite the "golden spoon in 
his mouth," Onate desired to be an explorer. 
The Crown refused to provide for further expe- 
ditions into the disappointing north; and about 
1595 Onate made a contract with the viceroy of 
New Spain to colonize New Mexico at his own 
expense. He made all preparations, and fitted out 
his costly expedition. Just then a new viceroy was 
appointed, who kept him waiting in Mexico with 
all his men for over two years, ere the necessary 
permission was given him to start. At last, early 
in 1597, he set out with his expedition, — which 
had cost him the equivalent of a million dollars, 
before it stirred a step. He took with him four hun- 
dred colonists, including two hundred soldiers, with 
women and children, and herds of sheep and cattle. 
Taking formal possession of New Mexico May 30, 
1598, he moved up the Rio Grande to where the 
hamlet of Chamita now is (north of Santa F^), and 
there founded, in September of that year, San 
Gabriel de los Espaiioles (St. Gabriel of the Span- 
iards), the second town in the United States. 



SPAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. 89 

Onate was remarkable not only for his success 
in colonizing a country so forbidding as this then 
was, but also as an explorer. He ransacked all the 
country round about, travelled to Acoma and put 
down a revolt of its Indians, and in 1600 made 
an expedition clear up into Nebraska. In 1604, 
with thirty men, he marched from San Gabriel across 
that grim desert to the Gulf of California, and re- 
turned to San Gabriel in April, 1605. By that time 
the English had penetrated no farther into the inte- 
rior of America than forty or fifty miles from the 
Atlantic coast. 

In 1605 Onate founded Santa Fe, the City of 
the Holy Faith of St. Francis, about whose age a 
great many foolish fables have been written. The 
city actually celebrated the three hundred and 
thirty-third anniversary of its founding twenty years 
before it was three centuries old. 

In 1606 Onate made another expedition to the far 
Northeast, about which expedition we know almost 
nothing; and in 1608 he was superseded by Pedro 
de Peralta, the second governor of New Mexico. 

Onate was of middle age when he made this very 
striking record. Born on the frontier, used to the 
deserts, endowed with great tenacity, coolness, and 
knowledge of frontier warfare, he was the very man 
to succeed in planting the first considerable colonies 
in the United States at their most dangerous and 
difficult points. 



90 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



VIII. 

TWO CONTINENTS MASTERED. 

THIS, then, was the situation in the New World 
at the beginning of the seventeenth century. 
Spain, having found the Americas, had, in a Httle 
over a hundred years of ceaseless exploration and 
conquest, settled and was civilizing them. She 
had in the New World hundreds of towns, whose 
extremes were over five thousand miles apart, with 
all the then advantages of civilization, and two 
towns in what is now the United States, a score of 
whose States her sons had penetrated. France had 
made a few gingerly expeditions, which bore no 
substantial fruit; and Portugal had founded a few 
comparatively unimportant towns in South Amer- 
ica. England had passed the century in masterly 
inactivity, — and there was not so much as an 
English hut or an English man between Cape Horn 
and the North Pole. 

That later times have reversed the situation ; 
that Spain (largely because she was drained of her 
best blood by a conquest so enormous that no 
nation even now could give the men or the money 
to keep the enterprise abreast with the world's pro- 
gress) has never regained her old strength, and is now 



TWO CONTINENTS MASTERED. 91 

a drone beside the young giant of nations that has 
grown, since her day, in the empire she opened, — 
has nothing to do with the obUgation of American 
history to give her justice for the past. Had there 
been no Spain four hundred years ago, there would 
be no United States to-day. It is a most fascinating 
story to every genuine American, — for every one 
worthy of the name admires heroism and loves fair- 
play everywhere, and is first of all interested in the 
truth about his own country. 

By 1680 the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico 
was beaded with Spanish settlements from Santa 
Cruz to below Socorro, two hundred miles ; and 
there were also colonies in the Taos valley, the ex- 
treme north of the Territory. From 1600 to 1680 
there had been countless expeditions throughout 
the Southwest, penetrating even the deadly Llano 
Estacado (Staked Plain). The heroism which held 
the Southwest so long was no less wonderful than 
the exploration that found it. The life of the 
colonists was a daily battle with niggard Nature — 
for New Mexico was never fertile — and with dead- 
liest danger. For three centuries they were cease- 
lessly harried by the fiendish Apaches ; and up to 
1680 there was no rest from the attempts of the 
Pueblos (who were actually with and all about the 
settlers) at insurrection. The statements of closet 
historians that the Spaniards enslaved the Pueblos, 
or any other Indians of New Mexico ; that they 
forced them to choose between Christianity and 
death ; that they made them work in the mines, and 



92 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

the like, — are all entirely untrue. The whole policy 
of Spain toward the Indians of the New World was 
one of humanity, justice, education, and moral 
suasion ; and though there were of course individual 
Spaniards who broke the strict laws of their country 
as to the treatment of the Indians, they were duly 
punished therefor. 

Yet the mere presence of the strangers in their 
country was enough to stir the jealous nature of the 
Indians; and in 1680 a murderous and causeless 
plot broke out in the red Pueblo Rebellion. There 
were then fifteen hundred Spaniards in the Terri- 
tory, — all living in Santa Yt or in scattered farm 
settlements ; for Chamita had long been abandoned. 

Thirty-four Pueblo towns were in the revolt, under 
the lead of a dangerous Tehua Indian named Pope. 
Secret runners had gone from pueblo to pueblo, and 
the murderous blow fell upon the whole Territory 
simultaneously. On that bitter loth of August, 
1680, over four hundred Spaniards were assassi- 
nated, — including twenty-one of the gentle mis- 
sionaries who, unarmed and alone, had scattered 
over the wilderness that they might save the souls 
and teach the minds of the savages. 

Antonio de Otermin was then governor and cap- 
tain-general of New Mexico, and was attacked in 
his capital of Santa F^ by a greatly-outnumbering 
army of Indians. The one hundred and twenty 
Spanish soldiers, cooped up in their little adobe 
city, soon found themselves unable to hold it longer 
against their swarming besiegers ; and after a week's 



TWO CONTINENTS MASTERED. 93 

desperate defence, they made a sortie, and hewed 
their way through to liberty, taking their women and 
children with them. They retreated down the Rio 
Grande, avoiding an ambush set for them at Sandia 
by the Indians, and reached the pueblo of Isleta, 
twelve miles below the present city of Albuquerque, 
in safety ; but the village was deserted, and the Span- 
iards were obliged to continue their flight to El 
Paso, Texas, which was then only a Spanish mission 
for the Indians. 

In 1 68 1 Governor Otermin made an invasion as 
far north as the pueblo of Cochiti, twenty-five miles 
west of Santa F^, on the Rio Grande ; but the hos- 
tile Pueblos forced htm to retreat again to El Paso. 
In 1687 Pedro Reneros Posada made another dash 
into New Mexico, and took the rock-built pueblo of 
Santa Ana by a most brilliant and bloody assault. 
But he also had to retire. In 1688 Domingo 
Jironza Petriz de Cruzate — the greatest soldier 
on New Mexican soil — made an expedition, in 
which he took the pueblo of Zia by storm (a still 
more remarkable achievement than Posada's), and 
in turn retreated to El Paso. 

At last the final conqueror of New Mexico, 
Diego de Vargas, came in 1692. Marching to 
Santa F^, and thence as far as ultimate Moqui, 
with only eighty-nine men, he visited every pueblo 
in the Province, meeting no opposition from the 
Indians, who had been thoroughly cowed by 
Cruzate. Returning to El Paso, he came again 
to New Mexico in 1693, this time with about one 



94 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

hundred and fifty soldiers and a number of col- 
onists. Now the Indians were prepared for him, 
and gave him the bloodiest reception ever accorded 
in New Mexico. They broke out first at Santa F^, 
and he had to storm that town, which he took after 
two days' fighting. Then began the siege of the 
Black Mesa of San Ildefonso, which lasted off and 
on for nine months. The Indians had removed 
their village to the top of that New Mexican Gib- 
raltar, and there resisted four daring assaults, but 
were finally worn into surrender. 

Meantime De Vargas had stormed the impreg- 
nable citadel of the Potrero Viejo, and the beetling 
cliff of San Diego de Jemez, — two exploits which 
rank with the storming of the Pefiol of Mixton ^ in 
Jalisco (Mexico) and of the vast rock of Acoma, as 
the most marvellous assaults in all American his- 
tory. The capture of Quebec bears no compari- 
son to them. 

These costly lessons kept the Indians quiet until 
1696, when they broke out again. This rebellion 
was not so formidable as the first, but it gave New 
Mexico another watering with blood, and was sup- 
pressed only after three months' fighting. The 
Spaniards were already masters of the situation; 
and the quelling of that revolt put an end to all 
trouble with the Pueblos, — who remain with us 
to this day practically undiminished in numbers, 
though they have fewer towns, a quiet, peaceful. 
Christianized race of industrious farmers, living 
1 Pronounced Mish-t6n. 



TWO CONTINENTS MASTERED, 95 

monuments to the humanity and the moral teaching 
of their conquerors. 

Then came the last century, a dismal hundred 
years of ceaseless harassment by the Apaches, 
Navajos, and Comanches, and occasionally by the 
Utes, — a harassment which had hardly ceased a 
decade ago. The Indian wars were so constant, 
the explorations (like that wonderful attempt to 
open a road from San Antonio de Bejar, Texas, to 
Monterey, California) so innumerable, that their 
individual heroism is lost in their own bewildering 
multitude. 

More than two centuries ago the Spaniards ex- 
plored Texas, and settlement soon followed. There 
were several minor expeditions ; but the first of 
magnitude was that of Alonzo de Leon, governor 
of the Mexican State of Coahuila, who made exten- 
sive explorations of Texas in 1689. By the begin- 
ning of the last century there were several Spanish 
settlements and presidios (garrisons) in what was to 
become, more than a hundred years later, the largest 
of the United States. 

The Spanish colonization of Colorado was not 
extensive, and they had no towns north of the Arkan- 
sas River ; but even in settling our Centennial State 
they were half a century ahead of us, as they were 
some centuries ahead in finding it. 

In California the Spaniards were very active. For 
a long time there were minor expeditions which were 
unsuccessful. Then the Franciscans came in 1769 
to San Diego Bay, landed on the bare sands where a 



gS THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

million-dollar American hotel stands to-day, and at 
once began to teach the Indians, to plant olive- 
orchards and vineyards, and to rear the noble stone 
churches so beautifully described by the author of 
" Ramona," which shall remain as monuments of a 
sublime faith long after the race that built them has 
gone from off the face of the earth. 

California had a long line of Spanish governors — 
the last of whom, brave, courtly, lovable old Pio Pico, 
has just died — before our acquisition of that garden- 
State of States. The Spaniards discovered gold there 
centuries, and were mining it a decade, before an 
" American " dreamed of the precious deposit which 
was to make such a mark on civilization, and had 
found the rich placer-fields of New Mexico a decade 
earlier yet. 

In Arizona, Father Franciscus Eusebius Kuehne,^ 
a Jesuit of Austrian birth but under Spanish auspices, 
was first to establish the missions on the Gila River, 
— from 1689 to 1 71 7 (the date of his death). He 
made at least four appalling journeys on foot from 
Sonora to the Gila, and descended that stream to its 
junction with the Colorado. It would be extremely 
interesting, did space permit, to follow fully the wan- 
derings and achievements of that class of pioneers 
of America who have left such a wonderful impress 
on the whole Southwest, — the Spanish missiona- 
ries. Their zeal and their heroism were infinite. 
No desert was too frightful for them, no danger 
too appalling. Alone, unarmed, they traversed the 
1 Often misspelled Kino. 



TIVO CONTINENTS MASTERED. 97 

most forbidding lands and braved the most deadly 
savages, and left in the lives of the Indians such a 
proud monument as mailed explorers and conquer- 
ing armies never made. 

The foregoing is a running summary of the early 
pioneering of America, — the only pioneering for 
more than a century, and the greatest pioneering 
for still another century. As for the great and won- 
derful work at last done by our own blood, not only 
in conquering part of a continent, but in making a 
mighty nation, the reader needs no help from me to 
enable him to comprehend it, — it has already found 
its due place in history. To record all the heroisms 
of the Spanish pioneers would fill, not this book, but 
a library. I have deemed it best, in such an enor- 
mous field, to draw the condensed outline, as has 
now been done ; and then to illustrate it by giving 
in detail a few specimens out of the host of hero- 
isms. I have already given a hint of how many con- 
quests and explorations and dangers there were; 
and now I wish to show by fair "sample pages" 
what Spanish conquest and exploration and endur- 
ance really were. 



II. 

SPECIMEN PIONEERS. 



I. 

THE FIRST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 

THE achievements of the explorer are among 
the most important, as they are among the 
most fascinating, of human heroisms. The qualities 
of mind and body necessary to his task are rare and 
admirable. He should have many sides and be 
strong in each, — the rounded man that Nature 
meant man to be. His body need not be as strong as 
Samson's, nor his mind as Napoleon's, nor his heart 
the most fully developed heart on earth ; but mind, 
heart, and body he needs, and each in the measure 
of a strong man. There is hardly another calling in 
which every muscle, so to speak, of his threefold 
nature will be more constantly or more evenly called 
into play. 

It is a curious fact that some of the very greatest 
of human achievements have come about by chance. 
Many among the most important discoveries in the 
history of mankind have been made by men who were 
not seeking the great truth they found. Science is the 
result not only of study, but of precious accidents ; 
and this is as true of history. It is an interesting 
study in itself, — the influence which happy blun- 



I02 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

ders and unintended happenings have had upon 
civilization. 

In exploration, as in invention, accident has played 
its important part. Some of the most valuable ex- 
plorations have been made by men who had no more 
idea of being explorers than they had of inventing 
a railroad to the moon ; and it is a striking fact that 
the first inland exploration of America, and the two 
most wonderful journeys in it, were not only acci- 
dents, but the crowning misfortunes and disappoint- 
ments of the men who had hoped for very different 
things. 

Exploration, intended or involuntary, has not only 
achieved great results for civilization, but in the doing 
has scored some of the highest feats of human hero- 
ism. America in particular, perhaps, has been the 
field of great and remarkable journeys ; but the two 
men who made the most astounding journeys in 
America are still almost unheard of among us. 
They are heroes whose names are as Greek to the 
vast majority of Americans, albeit they are men in 
whom Americans particularly should take deep and 
admiring interest. They were Alvar Nuiiez Cabeza 
de Vaca, the first American traveller ; and Andres 
Docampo, the man who walked farther on this con- 
tinent than any other. 

In a world so big and old and full of great deeds 
as this, it is ex.tremely difficult to say of any one 
man, " He was the greatest " this or that; and even 
in the matter of journeys there have been bewilder- 
ingly many great ones, of the most wonderful of which 



THE FIRST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 103 

we have heard least. As explorers we cannot give 
Vaca and Docampo great rank ; though the latter's 
explorations were not contemptible, and Vaca's were 
of great importance. But as physical achievements 
the journeys of these neglected heroes can safely be 
said to be without parallel. They were the most 
wonderful walks ever made by man. Both men made 
their records in America, and each made most of his 
journey in what is now the United States. 

Cabeza de Vaca was the first European really to 
penetrate the then " Dark Continent " of North 
America, as he was by centuries the first to cross 
the continent. His nine years of wandering on 
foot, unarmed, naked, starving, among wild beasts 
and wilder men, with no other attendants than three 
as ill-fated comrades, gave the world its first glimpse 
of the United States inland, and led to some of the 
most stirring and important achievements connected 
with its early history. Nearly a century before the 
Pilgrim Fathers planted their noble commonwealth 
on the edge of Massachusetts, seventy-five years 
before the first English settlement was made in the 
New World, and more than a generation before there 
was a single Caucasian settler of any blood within the 
area of the present United States, Vaca and his gaunt 
followers had trudged across this unknown land. 

It is a long way back to those days. Henry VHI. 
was then king of England, and sixteen rulers have 
since occupied that throne. Elizabeth, the Virgin 
Queen, was not born when Vaca started on his ap- 
palling journey, and did not begin to reign until 



104 1'HE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

twenty years after he had ended it. It was fifty 
years before the birth of Captain John Smith, the 
founder of Virginia ; a generation before the birth 
of Shakspere, and two and a half generations before 
Milton. Henry Hudson, the famous explorer for 
whom one of our chief rivers is named, was not yet 
born. Columbus himself had been dead less than 
twenty-five years, and the conqueror of Mexico had 
seventeen yet to live. It was sixty years before the 
world had heard of such a thing as a newspaper, 
and the best geographers still thought it possible to 
sail through America to Asia. There was not a white 
man in North America above the middle of Mexico ; 
nor had one gone two hundred miles inland in this 
continental wilderness, of which the world knew 
almost less than we know now of the moon. 

The name of Cabeza de Vaca may seem to us a 
curious one. It means " Head of a Cow." But 
this quaint family name was an honorable one in 
Spain, and had a brave winning : it was earned at 
the battle of Naves de Tolosa in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, one of the decisive engagements of all those 
centuries of war with the Moors. Alvar's grand- 
father was also a man of some note, being the con- 
queror of the Canary Islands. 

Alvar was born in Xeres ^ de la Frontera, Spain, 
toward the last of the fifteenth century. Of his 
early life we know little, except that he had already 
won some consideration when in 1527, a mature 
man, he came to the New World. In that year we 
^ Pronounced Hay-ress. 



THE FIRST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 105 

find him sailing from Spain as treasurer and sheriff 
of the expedition of six hundred men with which 
Panfilo de Narvaez intended to conquer and colo- 
nize the Flowery Land, discovered a decade before 
by Ponce de Leon. 

They reached Santo Domingo, and thence sailed 
to Cuba. On Good Friday, 1528, ten months after 
leaving Spain, they reached Florida, and landed at 
what is now named Tampa Bay. Taking formal pos- 
session of the country for Spain, they set out to 
explore and conquer the wilderness. At Santo Do- 
mingo shipwreck and desertion had already cost 
them heavily, and of the original six hundred men 
there were but three hundred and forty-five left. 
No sooner had they reached Florida than the most 
fearful misfortunes began, and with every day grew 
worse. Food there was almost none ; hostile Indi- 
ans beset them on every hand ; and the countless 
rivers, lakes, and swamps made progress difficult 
and dangerous. The little army was fast thinning 
out under war and starvation, and plots were rife 
among the survivors. They were so enfeebled that 
they could not even get back to their vessels. Strug- 
gling through at last to the nearest point on the 
coast, far west of Tampa Bay, they decided that 
their only hope was to build boats and try to coast 
to the Spanish settlements in Mexico. Five rude 
boats were made with great toil ; and the poor 
wretches turned westward along the coast of the 
Gulf. Storms scattered the boats, and wrecked one 
after the other. Scores of the haggard adventurers 



Io6 THE SPANISH PIONEERS, 

were drowned, Narvaez among them ; and scores 
dashed upon an inhospitable shore perished by ex- 
posure and starvation. The Hving were forced to 
subsist upon the dead. Of the five boats, three had 
gone down with all on board ; of the eighty men 
who escaped the wreck but fifteen were still alive. 
All their arms and clothing were at the bottom of 
the Gulf. 

The survivors were now on Mai Hado, " the Isle 
of Misfortune." We know no more of its location 
than that it was west of the mouth of the Mississippi. 
Their boats had crossed that mighty current where 
it plunges out into the Gulf, and theirs were the first 
European eyes to see even this much of the Father 
of Waters. The Indians of the island, who had no 
better larder than roots, berries, and fish, treated 
their unfortunate guests as generously as was in their 
power ; and Vaca has written gratefully of them. 

In the spring his thirteen surviving companions 
determined to escape. Vaca was too sick to walk, 
and they abandoned him to his fate. Two other 
sick men, Oviedo and Alaniz, were also left behind ; 
and the latter soon perished. It was a pitiable plight 
in which Vaca now found himself. A naked skele- 
ton, scarce able to move, deserted by his friends and 
at the mercy of savages, it is small wonder that, as 
he tells us, his heart sank within him. But he was 
one of the men who never '* let go." A constant 
soul held up the poor, worn body; and as the 
weather grew less rigorous, Vaca slowly recovered 
from his sickness. 



THE FIRST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 107 

For nearly six years he lived an incomparably 
lonely life, bandied about from tribe to tribe of 
Indians, sometimes as a slave, and sometimes only 
a despised outcast. Oviedo fled from some danger, 
and he was never heard of afterward ; Vaca faced 
it, and lived. That his sufferings were almost be- 
yond endurance cannot be doubted. Even when 
he was not the victim of brutal treatment, he was 
the worthless encumbrance, the useless interloper, 
among poor savages who lived the most miserable 
and precarious lives. That they did not kill him 
speaks well for their humane kindness. 

The thirteen who escaped had fared even worse. 
They had fallen into cruel hands, and all had been 
slain except three, who were reserved for the harder 
fate of slaves. These three were Andres Dorantes, 
a native of Bejar ; Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, 
a native of Salamanca ; and the negro Est^vanico, 
who was born in Azamor, Africa. These three and 
Vaca were all that were now left of the gallant four 
hundred and fifty men (among whom we do not 
count the deserters at Santo Domingo) who had 
sailed with such high hopes from Spain, in 1527, to 
conquer a corner of the New World, — four naked, 
tortured, shivering shadows ; and even they were 
separated, though they occasionally heard vaguely 
of one another, and made vain attempts to come to- 
gether. It was not until September, 1534 (nearly 
seven years later) , that Dorantes, Castillo, Est^van- 
ico, and Vaca were reunited ; and the spot where 
they found this happiness was somewhere in eastern 
Texas, west of the Sabine River. 



Io8 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

But Vaca's six years of loneliness and suffering 
unspeakable had not been in vain, — for he had 
acquired, unknowingly, the key to safety ; and amid 
all those horrors, and without dreaming of its signi- 
ficance, he had stumbled upon the very strange and 
interesting clew which was to save them all. With- 
out it, all four would have perished in the wilderness, 
and the world would never have known their end. 

While they were still on the Isle of Misfortune, a 
proposition had been made which seemed the 
height of the ridiculous. " In that isle," says Vaca, 
" they wished to make us doctors, without examin- 
ing us or asking our titles ; for they themselves cure 
sickness by blowing upon the sick one. With that 
blowing, and with their hands, they remove from 
him the disease ; and they bade us do the same, so 
as to be of some use to them. We laughed at this, 
saying that they were making fun, and that we knew 
not how to heal ; and for that they took away our 
food, till we should do that which they said. And 
seeing our stubbornness, an Indian said to me that 
I did not understand ; for that it did no good for 
one to know how, because the very stones and other 
things of the field have power to heal, . . . and 
that we, who were men, must certainly have greater 
power." 

This was a characteristic thing which the old 
Indian said, and a key to the remarkable super- 
stitions of his race. But the Spaniards, of course, 
could not yet understand. 

Presently the savages removed to the mainland. 



THE FIRST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 109 

They were always in abject poverty, and many of 
them perished from starvation and from the ex- 
posures incident to their wretched existence. For 
three months in the year they had " nothing but 
shell-fish and very bad water ; " and at other times 
only poor berries and the like ; and their year was 
a series of wanderings hither and thither in quest 
of these scant and unsatisfactory foods. 

It was an important fact that Vaca was utterly 
useless to the Indians. He could not serve them as 
a warrior ; for in his wasted condition the bow was 
more than he could master. As a hunter he was 
equally unavailable ; for, as he himself says, " it was 
impossible for him to trail animals." Assistance in 
carrying water or fuel or anything of the sort was 
impossible ; for he was a man, and his Indian mas- 
ters could not let a man do woman's work. So, 
among these starveling nomads, this man who could 
not help but must be fed was a real burden ; and 
the only wonder is that they did not kill him. 

Under these circumstances, Vaca began to wander 
about. His indifferent captors paid little attention 
to his movements, and by degrees he got to making 
long trips north, and up and down the coast. In time 
he began to see a chance for trading, in which the 
Indians encouraged him, glad to find their "white 
elephant" of some use at last. From the northern 
tribes he brought down skins and almagre (the red 
clay so indispensable to the savages for face-paint), 
flakes of flint to make arrow-heads, hard reeds for 
the shafts, and tassels of deer-hair dyed red. These 



no THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

things he readily exchanged among the coast tribes 
for shells and shell-beads, and the like, — which, in 
turn, were in demand among his northern customers. 

On account of their constant wars, the Indians 
could not venture outside their own range \ so this 
safe go-between trader was a convenience which 
they encouraged. So far as he was concerned, 
though the life was still one of great suffering, he 
was constantly gaining knowledge which would be 
useful to him in his never- forgotten plan of getting 
back to the world. These lonely trading expedi- 
tions of his covered thousands of miles on foot 
through the trackless wildernesses ; and through 
them his aggregate wanderings were much greater 
than those of either of his fellow-prisoners. 

It was during these long and awful tramps that 
Cabeza de Vaca had one particularly interesting 
experience. He was the first European who saw 
the great American bison, the buffalo, which has 
become practically extinct in the last decade, but 
once roamed the plains in vast hordes, — and first 
by many years. He saw them and ate their meat in 
the Red River country of Texas, and has left us a 
description of the " hunchback cows." None of his 
companions ever saw one, for in their subsequent 
journey together the four Spaniards passed south of 
the buffalo-country. 

Meanwhile, as I have noted, the forlorn and naked 
trader had had the duties of a doctor forced upon 
him. He did not understand what this involuntary 
profession might do for him, — he was simply pushed 



THE FIRST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. m 

into it at first, and followed it not from choice, but 
to keep from having trouble. He was "good for 
nothing but to be a medicine-man." He had 
learned the peculiar treatment of the aboriginal 
wizards, though not their fundamental ideas. The 
Indians still look upon sickness as a " being pos- 
sessed ; " and their idea of doctoring is not so 
much to cure disease, as to exorcise the bad 
spirits which cause it. 

This is done by a sleight-of-hand rigmarole, even 
to this day. The medicine-man would suck the 
sore spot, and pretend thus to extract a stone or 
thorn which was supposed to have been the cause of 
trouble ; and the patient was " cured." Cabeza de 
Vaca began to " practise medicine " after the Indian 
fashion. He says himself, " I have tried these 
things, and they were very successful." 

When the four wanderers at last came together 
after their long separation, — in which all had suf- 
fered untold horrors, — Vaca had then, though still 
indefinitely, the key of hope. Their first plan was 
to escape from their present captors. It took ten 
months to effect it, and meantime their distress was 
great, as it had been constantly for so many years. 
At times they lived on a daily ration of two hand- 
fuls of wild peas and a little water. Vaca relates 
what a godsend it seemed when he was allowed to 
scrape hides for the Indians ; he carefully saved the 
scrapings, which served him as food for days. They 
had no clothing, and there was no shelter ; and con- 
stant exposure to heat and cold and the myriad 



112 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

thorns of that country caused them to " shed their 
skin Hke snakes." 

At last, in August, 1535, the four sufferers es- 
caped to a tribe called the Avavares. But now a 
new career began to open to them. That his com- 
panions might not be as useless as he had been, 
Cabeza de Vaca had instructed them in the " arts " 
of Indian medicine-men ; and all four began to put 
their new and strange profession into practice. To 
the ordinary Indian charms and incantations these 
humble Christians added fervent prayers to the true 
God. It was a sort of sixteenth-century " faith- 
cure ; " and naturally enough, among such supersti- 
tious patients it was very effective. Their multitu- 
dinous cures the amateur but sincere doctors, with 
touching humility, attributed entirely to God ; but 
what great results these might have upon their own 
fortunes now began to dawn upon them. From 
wandering, naked, starving, despised beggars, and 
slaves to brutal savages, they suddenly became per- 
sonages of note, — still paupers and sufferers, as 
were all their patients, but paupers of mighty power. 
There is no fairy tale more romantic than the career 
thenceforth of these poor, brave men walking pain- 
fully across a continent as masters and benefactors 
of all that host of wild people. 

Trudging on from tribe to tribe, painfully and 
slowly the white medicine-men crossed Texas and 
came close to our present New Mexico. It has long 
been reiterated by the closet historians that they 
entered New Mexico, and got even as far north as 



THE FIRST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 113 

where Santa Fe now is. But modern scientific 
research has absolutely proved that they went on 
from Texas through Chihuahua and Sonora, and 
never saw an inch of New Mexico. 

With each new tribe the Spaniards paused awhile 
to heal the sick. Everywhere they were treated 
with the greatest kindness their poor hosts could 
give, and with religious awe. Their progress is a 
very valuable object-lesson, showing just how some 
Indian myths are formed : first, the successful medi- 
cine-man, who at his death or departure is remem- 
bered as a hero, then as a demigod, then as divinity. 

In the Mexican States they first found agricultural 
Indians, who dwelt in houses of sod and boughs, and 
had beans and pumpkins. These were the Jovas, a 
branch of the Pimas. Of the scores of tribes they 
had passed through in our present Southern States 
not one has been fully identified. They were poor, 
wandering creatures, and long ago disappeared from 
the earth. But in the Sierra Madre of Mexico they 
found superior Indians, whom we can recognize still. 
Here they found the men unclad, but the women 
"very honest in their dress," — with cotton tunics 
of their own weaving, with half-sleeves, and a skirt 
to the knee ; and over it a skirt of dressed deerskin 
reaching to the ground, and fastened in front with 
straps. They washed their clothing with a soapy 
root, — the a?nole, now similarly used by Indians and 
Mexicans throughout the Southwest. These people 
gave Cabeza de Vaca some turquoise, and five arrow- 
heads each chipped from a single emerald. 



114 ^^^ SPANISH PIONEERS. 

In this village in southwestern Sonora the Span- 
iards stayed three days, living on split deer-hearts 3 
whence they named it the *' Town of Hearts." 

A day's march beyond they met an Indian wear- 
ing upon his necklace the buckle of a sword-belt 
and a horseshoe nail ; and their hearts beat high at 
this first sign, in all their eight years' wandering, of 
the nearness of Europeans. The Indian told them 
that men with beards like their own had come from 
the sky and made war upon his people. 

The Spaniards were now entering Sinaloa, and 
found themselves in a fertile land of flowing streams. 
The Indians were in mortal fear ; for two brutes of 
a class who were very rare among the Spanish con- 
querors (they were, I am glad to say, punished for 
their violation of the strict laws of Spain) were then 
trying to catch slaves. The soldiers had just left ; 
but Cabeza de Vaca and Est^vanico, with eleven 
Indians, hurried forward on their trail, and next day 
overtook four Spaniards, who led them to their 
rascally captain, Diego de Alcaraz. It was long 
before that officer could believe the wondrous story 
told by the naked, torn, shaggy, wild man ; but at 
last his coldness was thawed, and he gave a certifi- 
cate of the date and of the condition in which Vaca 
had come to him, and then sent back for Dorantes 
and Castillo. Five days later these arrived, accom- 
panied by several hundred Indians. 

Alcaraz and his partner in crime, Cebreros, wished 
to enslave these aborigines; but Cabeza de Vaca, 
regardless of his own danger in taking such a stand, 



THE FIRST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 115 

indignantly opposed the infamous plan, and finally 
forced the villains to abandon it. The Indians 
were saved ; and in all their joy at getting back to 
the world, the Spanish wanderers parted with sincere 
regret from these simple-hearted friends. After a 
few days' hard travel they reached the post of Culi- 
acan about the first of May, 1536, where they were 
warmly welcomed by the ill-fated hero Melchior 
Diaz. He led one of the earliest expeditions ( in 
1539) to the unknown north; and in 1540, on a 
second expedition across part of Arizona and into 
California, was accidentally killed. 

After a short rest the wanderers left for Compos- 
tela, then the chief town of the province of New 
Galicia, — itself a small journey of three hundred 
miles through a land swarming with hostile savages. 
At last they reached the City of Mexico in safety, 
and were received with great honor. But it was 
long before they could accustom themselves to eat- 
ing the food and wearing the clothing of civilized 
people. 

The negro remained in Mexico. On the loth of 
April, 1537, Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, and Dorantes 
sailed for Spain, arriving in August. The chief hero 
never came back to North America, but we hear of 
Dorantes as being there in the following year. Their 
report of what they saw, and of the stranger coun- 
tries to the north of which they had heard, had 
already set on foot the remarkable expeditions which 
resulted in the discovery of Arizona, New Mexico, 
our Indian Territory, Kansas, and Colorado, and 



Ii6 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

brought about the building of the first European 
towns in the inland area of the United States. 
Est^vanico was engaged with Fray Marcos in the 
discovery of New Mexico, and was slain by the 
Indians. 

Cabeza de Vaca, as a reward for his then unpar- 
alleled walk of much more than ten thousand miles 
in the unknown land, was made governor of Para- 
guay in 1 540. He was not qualified for the place, and 
returned to Spain in disgrace. That he was not to 
blame, however, but was rather the victim of circum- 
stances, is indicated by the fact that he was restored 
to favor and received a pension of two thousand 
ducats. He died in Seville at a good old age. 



THE GREATEST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 117 



II. 

THE GREATEST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 

THE student most familiar with history finds 
himself constantly astounded by the journeys 
of the Spanish Pioneers. If they had done nothing 
else in the New World, their walks alone were enough 
to earn them fame. Such a number of similar trips 
over such a wilderness were never heard of elsewhere. 
To comprehend those rides or tramps of thousands 
of miles, by tiny bands or single heroes, one must 
be familiar with the country traversed, and know 
something of the times when these exploits were 
performed. The Spanish chroniclers of the day do 
not dilate upon the difficulties and dangers : it is 
almost a pity that they had not been vain enough to 
" make more " of their obstacles. But however 
curt the narrative may be on these points, the ob- 
stacles were there and had to be overcome ; and to 
this very day, after three centuries and a half have 
mitigated that wilderness which covered half a world, 
have tamed its savages, filled it with convenient 
stations, crossed it with plain roads, and otherwise 
removed ninety per cent of its terrors, such journeys 
as were looked upon as every-day matters by those 



Il8 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

hardy heroes would find few bold enough to under- 
take them. The only record at all comparable to 
that Spanish overrunning of the New World was the 
story of the California Argonauts of '49, who flocked 
across the great plains in the most remarkable shift- 
ing of population of which history knows ; but even 
that was petty, so far as area, hardship, danger, and 
endurance went, beside the travels of the Pioneers. 
Thousand-mile marches through the deserts, or the 
still more fatal tropic forests, were too many to be 
even catalogued. It is one thing to follow a trail, 
and quite another to penetrate an absolutely track- 
less wilderness. A big, well-armed wagon-train is 
one thing, and a little squad on foot or on jaded 
horses quite another. A journey from a known 
point to a known point — both in civilization, 
though the wilderness lies between — is very differ- 
ent from a journey from somewhere, through the un- 
known, to nowhere ; whose starting, course, and end 
are all untrodden and unguessed wilds. I have no 
desire to disparage the heroism of our Argonauts, — 
they made a record of which any nation should be 
proud ; but they never had a chance to match 
the deeds of their brother- heroes of another tongue 
and another age. 

The walk of Alvar Nufiez Cabeza de Vaca, the first 
American traveller, was surpassed by the achieve- 
ment of the poor and forgotten soldier Andres Do- 
campo. Cabeza de Vaca tramped much more than 
ten thousand miles, but Docampo much over twenty 



THE GREATEST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 119 

thousand, and under as fearful hardships. The ex- 
plorations of Vaca were far more valuable to the 
world ; yet neither of them set out with the inten- 
tion of exploring. But Docampo did make a fear- 
ful walk voluntarily, and for a heroic purpose, which 
resulted in his later enormous achievement; while 
Vaca's was merely the heroism of a very uncom- 
mon man in escaping misfortune. Docampo's tramp 
lasted nine years ; and though he left behind no 
book to relate his experiences, as did Vaca, the 
skeleton of his story as it remains to us is extremely 
characteristic and suggestive of the times, and re- 
counts other heroism than that of the brave soldier. 

When Coronado first came to New Mexico in 
1540, he brought four missionaries with his little 
army. Fray Marcos returned soon from Zuni to 
Mexico, on account of his physical infirmities. 
Fray Juan de la Cruz entered earnestly into mis- 
sion-work among the Pueblos ; and when Coro- 
nado and his whole force abandoned the Territory, 
he insisted upon remaining behind among his dusky 
wards at Tiguex (Bernalillo). He was a very old 
man, and fully expected to give up his life as soon 
as his countrymen should be gone ; and so it was. 
He was murdered by the Indians about the 25th 
of November, 1542. 

The lay-brother. Fray Luis Descalona, also a very 
old man, chose for his parish the pueblo of Tshi- 
quite (Pecos), and remained there after the Span- 
iards had left the country. He built himself a little 
hut outside the great fortified town of the savages, 



120 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

and there taught those who would listen to him, and 
tended his little flock of sheep, — the remnants of 
those Coronado had brought, which were the first 
that ever entered the present United States. The 
people came to love him sincerely, — all save the 
wizards, who hated him for his influence ; and these 
finally murdered him, and ate the sheep. 

Fray Juan de Padilla, the youngest of the four mis- 
sionaries, and the first martyr on the soil of Kan- ' 
sas, was a native of Andalusia, Spain, and a man of 
great energy both mentally and physically. He 
himself made no mean record as a foot-traveller, 
and our professional pedestrians would stand aghast 
if confronted with the thousands of desert miles this 
tireless apostle to the Indians plodded in the wild 
Southwest. He had already held very important 
positions in Mexico, but gladly gave up his honors 
to become a poor missionary among the savages of 
the unknown north. Having walked with Corona- 
do's force from Mexico across the deserts to the 
Seven Cities of Cibola, Fray Padilla trudged to 
Moqui with Pedro de Tobar and his squad of twenty 
men. Then plodding back to Zuni, he soon set 
forth again with Hernando de Alvarado and twenty 
men, on a tramp of about a thousand miles more. 
He was in this expedition with the first Europeans 
that ever saw the lofty town of Acoma, the Rio 
Grande within what is now New Mexico, and the 
great pueblo of Pecos. 

In the spring of 1541, when the handful of an 
army was all gathered at Bernalillo, and Coronado 



THE GREATEST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 12 1 

set out to chase the fatal golden myth of the Qui- 
vira, Fray Padilla accompanied him. In that march 
of one hundred and four days across the barren 
plains before they reached the Quiviras in north- 
eastern Kansas, the explorers suffered tortures for 
water and sometimes for food. The treacherous 
guide misled them, and they wandered long in a 
circle, covering a fearful distance, — probably over 
fifteen hundred miles. The expedition was mounted, 
but in those days the humble padres went afoot. 
Finding only disappointment, the explorers marched 
all the way back to Bernalillo, — though by a less cir- 
cuitous route, — and Fray Padilla came with them. 
But he had already decided that among these 
hostile, roving, buffalo- living Sioux and other In- 
dians of the plains should be his field of labor; 
and when the Spanish evacuated New Mexico, he 
remained. With him were the soldier Andres Do- 
campo, two young men of Michuacan, Mexico, 
named Lucas and Sebastian, called the Donados, 
and a few Mexican Indian boys. In the fall of 
1542 the little party left Bernahllo on its thou- 
sand-mile march. Andres alone was mounted ; the 
missionary and the Indian boys trudged along the 
sandy way afoot. They went by way of the pueblo 
of Pecos, thence into and across a corner of what is 
now Colorado, and nearly the whole length of the 
great State of Kansas. At last, after a long and 
weary tramp, they reached the temporary lodge- 
villages of the Quivira Indians. Coronado had 
planted a large cross at one of these villages, and 



122 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

here Fray Padilla established his mission. In time 
the hostile savages lost their distrust, and " loved 
him as a father." At last he decided to move on 
to another nomad tribe, where there seemed greater 
need of his presence. It was a dangerous step ; for 
not only might the strangers receive him murder- 
ously, but there was equal risk in leaving his present 
flock. The superstitious Indians were loath to lose 
the presence of such a great medicine-man as they 
believed the Fray to be, and still more loath to have 
such a benefit transferred to their enemies, — for all 
these roving tribes were at war with one another. 
Nevertheless, Fray Padilla determined to go, and 
set out with his little retinue. One day's journey 
from the villages of the Quiviras, they met a band of 
Indians out on the war-path. Seeing the approach 
of the savages, the good Father thought first for his 
companions. Andres still had his horse, and the 
boys were fleet runners. 

'* Flee, my children ! " cried Fray Padilla. " Save 
yourselves, for me ye cannot help, and why should 
all die together? Run ! " 

They at first refused, but the missionary insisted ; 
and as they were helpless against the savages, they 
finally obeyed and fled. This may not seem, at first 
thought, the most heroic thing to do, but an under- 
standing of their time exonerates them. Not only 
were they humble men used to give the good priests 
implicit obedience, but there was another and a more 
potent motive. In those days of earnest faith, mar- 
tyrdom was looked upon as not only a heroism but 



THE GREATEST AMERICAN TRAVELLER. 123 

a prophecy ; it was believed to indicate new tri- 
umphs for Christianity, and it was a duty to carry 
back to the world the news. If they stayed and were 
slain with him, — as I am sure these faithful followers 
were not physically afraid to do, — the lesson and 
glory of his martyrdom would be lost to the world. 

Fray Juan knelt on the broad prairie and com- 
mended his soul to God; and even as he prayed, 
the Indians riddled him with arrows. They dug a 
pit and cast therein the body of the first Kansas 
martyr, and piled upon it a great pile of stones. 
This was in the year 1542. 

Andres Docampo and the boys made their escape 
at the time, but were soon captured by other Indians 
and kept as slaves for ten months. They were beaten 
and starved, and obliged to perform the most labori- 
ous and menial tasks. At last, after long planning 
and many unsuccessful attempts, they escaped from 
their barbarous captors. Then for more than eight 
years they wandered on foot, unarmed and alone, 
up and down the thirsty and inhospitable plains, 
enduring incredible privations and dangers. At last, 
after those thousands of footsore miles, they walked 
into the Mexican town of Tampico, on the great 
Gulf. They were received as those come back from 
the dead. We lack the details of that grim and 
matchless walk, but it is historically established. 
For nine years these poor fellows zigzagged the 
deserts afoot, beginning in northeastern Kansas 
and coming out far down in Mexico. 

Sebastian died soon after his arrival in the Mexi- 



124 ^^^ SPANISH PIONEERS. 

can State of Culiacan; the hardships of the trip 
had been too much for even his strong young body. 
His brother Lucas became a missionary among the 
Indians of Zacatecas, Mexico, and carried on his 
work among them for many years, dying at last in a 
ripe old age. As for the brave soldier Docampo, 
soon after his return to civilization he disappeared 
from view. Perhaps old Spanish documents may 
yet be discovered which will throw some light on his 
subsequent life and his fate. 



THE WAR OF THE ROCK. 125 



III. 

THE WAR OF THE ROCK. 

SOME of the most characteristic heroisms and 
hardships of the Pioneers in our domain clus- 
ter about the wondrous rock of Acoma, the strange 
sky-city of the Queres ^ Pueblos. All the Pueblo 
cities were built in positions which Nature herself 
had fortified, — a necessity of the times, since they 
were surrounded by outnumbering hordes of the 
deadliest warriors in history ; but Acoma was most 
secure of all. In the midst of a long valley, four 
miles wide, itself lined by almost insurmountable 
precipices, towers a lofty rock, whose top is about 
seventy acres in area, and whose walls, three hundred 
and fifty-seven feet high, are not merely perpendicu- 
lar, but in most places even overhanging. Upon its 
summit was perched — and is to-day — the dizzy city 
of the Queres. The few paths to the top — whereon 
a misstep will roll the victim to horrible death, hun- 
dreds of feet below — are by wild, precipitous clefts, 
at the head of which one determined man, with no 
other weapons than stones, could almost hold at bay 
an army. 

1 Pronounced Kay-ress. 



126 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

This strange aerial town was first heard of by 
Europeans in 1539, when Fray Marcos, the dis- 
coverer of New Mexico, was told by the people of 
Cibola of the great rock fortress of Hakuque, — 
their name for Acoma, which the natives them- 
selves called Ah'ko. In the following year Coro- 
nado visited it with his little army, and has left us 
an accurate account of its wonders. These first 
Europeans were well received there ; and the su- 
perstitious natives, who had never seen a beard 
or a white face before, took the strangers for gods. 
But it was more than half a century later yet before 
the Spaniards sought a foothold there. 

When Onate entered New Mexico in 1598, he 
met no immediate resistance whatever ; for his force 
of four hundred people, including two hundred men- 
at-arms, was large enough to awe the Indians. They 
were naturally hostile to these invaders of their 
domain ; but finding themselves well treated by the 
strangers, and fearful of open war against these men 
with hard clothes, who killed from afar with their 
thunder-sticks, the Pueblos awaited results. The 
Quires, Tigua, and Jemez branches formally submit- 
ted to Spanish rule, and took the oath of allegiance 
to the Crown by their representative men gathered 
at the pueblo of Guipuy (now Santo Domingo) ; as 
also did the Tanos, Picuries, Tehuas, and Taos, at 
a similar conference at the pueblo of San Juan, in 
September, 1598. At this ready submission Oriate 
was greatly encouraged ; and he decided to visit 
all the principal pueblos in person, to make them 



THE WAR OP THE ROCK. 127 

securer subjects of his sovereign. He had founded 
already the first town in New Mexico and the 
second in the United States, — San Gabriel de los 
Espanoles, where Chamita stands to-day. Before 
starting on this perilous journey, he despatched 
Juan de Zaldivar, his maestro de campo^ with fifty 
men to explore the vast, unknown plains to the 
east, and then to follow him. 

Onate and a small force left the lonely little 
Spanish colony, — more than a thousand miles from 
any other town of civilized men, — October 6, 
1598. First he marched to the pueblos in the 
great plains of the Salt Lakes, east of the Man- 
zano mountains, — a thirsty journey of more than 
two hundred miles. Then returning to the pueblo 
of Puaray (opposite the present Bernalillo), he 
turned westward. On the 27th of the same month 
he camped at the foot of the lofty cliffs of Acoma. 
The principales (chief men) of the town came 
down from the rock, and took the solemn pledge 
of allegiance to the Spanish Crown. They were 
thoroughly warned of the deep importance and 
meaning of this step, and that if they violated 
their oath they would be regarded and treated as 
rebels against his Majesty; but they fully pledged 
themselves to be faithful vassals. They were very 
friendly, and repeatedly invited the Spanish com- 
mander and his men to visit their sky-city. In 
truth, they had had spies at the conferences in 
Santo Domingo and San Juan, and had decided 

1 Commander in the field : equivalent to our colonel. 



128 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

that the most dangerous man among the invaders 
was Ofiate himself. If he could be slain, they 
thought the rest of the pale strangers might be 
easily routed. 

But Ofiate knew nothing of their intended treach- 
ery ; and on the following day he and his handful 
of men — leaving only a guard with the horses — 
climbed one of the breathless stone '' ladders," and 
stood in Acoma. The officious Indians piloted them 
hither and yon, showing them the strange terraced 
houses of many stories in height, the great reservoirs 
in the eternal rock, and the dizzy brink which every- 
where surrounded the eyrie of a town. At last they 
brought the Spaniards to where a huge ladder, pro- 
jecting far aloft through a trapdoor in the roof of a 
large house, indicated the estiifa, or sacred council- 
chamber. The visitors mounted to the roof by a 
smaller ladder, and the Indians tried to have Ofiate 
descend through the trapdoor. But the Spanish 
governor, noting that all was dark in the room be- 
low, and suddenly becoming suspicious, declined to 
enter; and as his soldiers were all about, the In- 
dians did not insist. After a short visit in the 
pueblo the Spaniards descended the rock to their 
camp, and thence marched away on their long 
and dangerous journey to Moqui and Zuni. That 
swift flash of prudence in Oiiate's mind saved the 
history of New Mexico ; for in that dark estufa was 
lying a band of armed warriors. Had he entered 
the room, he would have been slain at once ; and 
his death was to be the signal for a general on- 



THE WAR OP THE ROCK. 129 

slaught upon the Spaniards, all of whom must have 
perished in the unequal fight. 

Returning from his march of exploration through 
the trackless and deadly plains, Juan de Zaldivar 
left San Gabriel on the i8th of November, to follow 
his commander-in-chief. He had but thirty men. 
Reaching the foot of the City in the Sky on the 4th 
of December, he was very kindly received by the 
Acomas, who invited him up into their town. Juan 
was a good soldier, as well as a gallant one, and 
well used to the tricks of Indian warfare ; but for 
the first time in his life — and the last — he now 
let himself be deceived. Leaving half his little force 
at the foot of the cliff to guard the camp and 
horses, he himself went up with sixteen men. The 
town was so full of wonders, the people so cordial, 
that the visitors soon forgot whatever suspicions 
they may have had ; and by degrees they scattered 
hither and yon to see the strange sights. The 
natives had been waiting only for this ; and when 
the war-chief gave the wild whoop, men, women, 
and children seized rocks and clubs, bows and flint- 
knives, and fell furiously upon the scattered Span- 
iards. It was a ghastly and an unequal fight the 
winter sun looked down upon that bitter afternoon in 
the cliff city. Here and there, with back against the 
wall of one of those strange houses, stood a gray- 
faced, tattered, bleeding soldier, swinging his clumsy 
flintlock club-like, or hacking with desperate but 
unavailing sword at the dark, ravenous mob that 
hemmed him, while stones rained upon his bent 
9 



130 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

visor, and clubs and cruel flints sought him from 
every side. There was no coward blood among 
that doomed band. They sold their lives dearly; 
in front of every one lay a sprawling heap of dead. 
But one by one the howling wave of barbarians 
drowned each grim, silent fighter, and swept off to 
swell the murderous flood about the next. 21al- 
divar himself was one of the first victims ; and two 
other officers, six soldiers, and two servants fell in 
that uneven combat. The five survivors — Juan 
Tabaro, who was alguacil-mayor, with four sold- 
iers — got at last together, and with superhuman 
strength fought their way to the edge of the cliff, 
bleeding from many wounds. But their savage 
foes still pressed them ; and being too faint to 
carve their way to one of the " ladders," in the 
wildness of desperation the five sprang over the 
beetling cliff. 

Never but once was recorded so frightful a leap 
as that of Tabaro and his four companions. Even if 
we presume that they had been so fortunate as to 
reach the very lowest point of the rock, it could 
not have been less than one hundred and fifty feet / 
And yet only one of the five was killed by this in- 
conceivable fall; the remaining four, cared for by 
their terrified companions in the camp, all finally 
recovered. It would be incredible, were it not es- 
tablished by absolute historical proof. It is prob- 
able that they fell upon one of the mounds of white 
sand which the winds had drifted against the foot of 
the cliffs in places. 



THE WAR OP THE ROCK. 131 

Fortunately, the victorious savages did not attack 
the Httle camp. The survivors still had their horses, 
of which unknown brutes the Indians had a great 
fear. For several days the fourteen soldiers and 
their four half-dead companions camped under the 
overhanging cliff, where they were safe from missiles 
from above, hourly expecting an onslaught from the 
savages. They felt sure that this massacre of their 
comrades was but the prelude to a general uprising 
of the twenty-five or thirty thousand Pueblos ; and 
regardless of the danger to themselves, they decided 
at last to break up into little bands, and separate, — 
some to follow their commander on his lonely march 
to Moqui, and warn him of his danger ; and others 
to hasten over the hundreds of arid miles to San Ga- 
briel and the defence of its women and babes, and 
to the missionaries who had scattered among the 
savages. This plan of self-devotion was successfully 
carried out. The little bands of three and four 
apiece bore the news to their countrymen ; and by 
the end of the year 1598 all the surviving Spaniards 
in New Mexico were safely gathered in the hamlet 
of San Gabriel. The little town was built pueblo- 
fashion, in the shape of a hollow square. In the 
Plaza within were planted the rude pedrcros — small 
howitzers which fired a ball of stone — to command 
the gates; and upon the roofs of the three-story 
adobe houses the brave women watched by day, and 
the men with their heavy flintlocks all through the 
winter nights, to guard against the expected at- 
tack. But the Pueblos rested on their arms. They 



132 



THE SPANISH PIONEERS, 



were waiting to see what Ofiate would do with 
Acoma, before they took final measures against the 
strangers. 

It was a most serious dilemma in which Ofiate 
now found himself. One need not have known half 
so much about the Indian character as did this gray, 
quiet Spaniard, to understand that he must signally 
punish the rebels for the massacre of his men, or 
abandon his colony and New Mexico altogether. 
If such an outrage went unpunished, the emboldened 
Pueblos would destroy the last Spaniard. On the 
other hand, how could he hope to conquer that 
impregnable fortress of rock? He had less than 
two hundred men ; and only a small part of these 
could be spared for the campaign, lest the other 
Pueblos in their absence should rise and annihilate 
San Gabriel and its people. In Acoma there were 
full three hundred warriors, reinforced by at least 
a hundred Navajo braves. 

But there was no alternative. The more he re- 
flected and counselled with his of^cers, the more 
apparent it became that the only salvation was to 
capture the Quires Gibraltar ; and the plan was de- 
cided upon. Oiiate naturally desired to lead in per- 
son this forlornest of forlorn hopes ; but there was 
one who had even a better claim to the desperate 
honor than the captain-general, — and that one 
was the forgotten hero Vicente de Zaldivar, brother 
of the murdered Juan. He was sargento-mayor'^ of 
the little army ; and when he came to Onate and 
1 Equivalent to lieutenant-colonel. 



THE WAR OP THE ROCK. 133 

begged to be given command of the expedition 
against Acoma, there was no saying him nay. 

On the 1 2th of January, 1599, Vicente de Zaldivar 
left San Gabriel at the head of seventy men. Only 
a few of them had even the clumsy flintlocks of the 
day ; the majority were not arquebusiers hutpiquiers, 
armed only with swords and lances, and clad in 
jackets of quilted cotton or battered mail. One 
small ped7'ero, lashed upon the back of a horse, was 
the only " artillery." 

Silently and sternly the little force made its ardu- 
ous march. All knew that impregnable rock, and 
few cherished an expectation of returning from so 
desperate a mission ; but there was no thought of 
turning back. On the afternoon of the eleventh day 
the tired soldiers passed the last intervening fnesa,^ 
and came in sight of Acoma. The Indians, warned 
by their runners, were ready to receive them. The 
whole population, with the Navajo allies, were under 
arms, on the housetops and the commanding chffs. 
Naked savages, painted black, leaped from crag to 
crag, screeching defiance and heaping insults upon 
the Spaniards. The medicine-men, hideously dis- 
guised, stood on projecting pinnacles, beating their 
drums and scattering curses and incantations to the 
winds ; and all the populace joined in derisive howls 
and taunts. 

Zaldivar halted his little band as close to the foot 
of the cliff as he could come without danger. The 
indispensable notary stepped from the ranks, and at 
1 Huge " table " of rock. 



134 1'^^ SPANISH PIONEERS. 

the blast of the trumpet proceeded to read at the 
top of his lungs the formal summons in the name of 
the king of Spain to surrender. Thrice he shouted 
through the summons ; but each time his voice was 
drowned by the howls and shrieks of the enraged 
savages, and a hail of stones and arrows fell danger- 
ously near. Zaldivar had desired to secure the sur- 
render of the pueblo, demand the delivery to him of 
the ringleaders in the massacre, and take them back 
with him to San Gabriel for official trial and punish- 
ment, without harm to the other people of Acoma ; 
but the savages, secure in their grim fortress, mocked 
the merciful appeal. It was clear that Acoma must 
be stormed. The Spaniards camped on the bare 
sands and passed the night — made hideous by the 
sounds of a monster war-dance in the town — in 
gloomy plans for the morrow. 



THR STORMING OP THE SKY-CITY, 135 



IV. 

THE STORMING OF THE SKY-CITY. 



A' 



T daybreak, on the morning of January 22, 
Zaldivar gave the signal for the attack ; and 
the main body of the Spaniards began firing their 
few arquebuses, and making a desperate assault at 
the north end of the great rock, there absolutely 
impregnable. The Indians, crowded along the cliffs 
above, poured down a rain of missiles ; and many 
of the Spaniards were wounded. Meanwhile twelve 
picked men, who had hidden during the night 
under the overhanging cliff which protected them 
alike from the fire and the observation of the 

[ Indians, were crawling stealthily around under the 

precipice, dragging the pedrero by ropes. Most of 
these twelve were arquebusiers ; and besides the 

^ weight of the ridiculous little cannon, they had their 

ponderous flint-locks and their clumsy armor, — 
poor helps for scaling heights which the unencum- 

' bered athlete finds difficult. Pursuing their toilsome 

way unobserved, pulling one another and then the 

I pedrero up the ledges, they reached at last the top 

I of a great outlying pinnacle of rock, separated from 

the main cliff of Acoma by a narrow but awful 
chasm. Late in the afternoon they had their how- 



136 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

itzer trained upon the town ; and the loud report, 
as its cobble-stone ball flew into Acoma, signalled 
the main body at the north end of the mesa that 
the first vantage-ground had been safely gained, and 
at the same time warned the savages of danger from 
a new quarter. 

That night little squads of Spaniards climbed the 
great precipices which wall the trough-like valley on 
east and west, cut down small pines, and with infi- 
nite labor dragged the logs down the cliffs, across 
the valley, and up the butte on which the twelve 
were stationed. About a score of men were left to 
guard the horses at the north end of the mesa ; and 
the rest of the force joined the twelve, hiding behind 
the crags of their rock-tower. Across the chasm 
the Indians were lying in crevices, or behind rocks, 
awaiting the attack. 

At daybreak of the 23 d, a squad of picked men 
at a given signal rushed from their hiding-places 
with a log on their shoulders, and by a lucky cast 
lodged its farther end on the opposite brink of the 
abyss. Out dashed the Spaniards at their heels, and 
began balancing across that dizzy '' bridge " in the 
face of a volley of stones and arrows. A very few 
had crossed, when one in his excitement caught the 
rope and pulled the log across after him. 

It was a fearful moment. There were less than 
a dozen Spaniards thus left standing alone on the 
brink of Acoma, cut off from their companions by 
a gulf hundreds of feet deep, and surrounded by 
swarming savages. The Indians, sallying from their 



THE STORMING OF THE SKY-CITY. 137 

refuge, fell instantly upon them on every hand. As 
long as the Spanish soldier could keep the Indians 
at a distance, even his clumsy firearms and ineffi- 
cient armor gave an advantage ; but at such close 
quarters these very things were a fatal impediment 
by their weight and clumsiness. Now it seemed as if 
the previous Acoma massacre were to be repeated, 
and the cut-off Spaniards to be hacked to pieces ; 
but at this very crisis a deed of surpassing personal 
valor saved them and the cause of Spain in New 
Mexico. A slender, bright-faced young officer, a 
college boy who was a special friend and favorite of 
Onate, sprang from the crowd of dismayed Spaniards 
on the farther bank, who dared not fire into that in- 
discriminate jostle of friend and foe, and came run- 
ning like a deer toward the chasm. As he reached 
its brink his lithe body gathered itself, sprang into 
the air like a bird, and cleared the gulf ! Seizing the 
log, he thrust it back with desperate strength until 
his companions could grasp it from the farther 
brink; and over the restored bridge the Spanish 
soldiers poured to retrieve the day. 

Then began one of the most fearful hand-to-hand 
struggles in all American history. Outnumbered 
nearly ten to one, lost in a howling mob of savages 
who fought with the frenzy of despair, gashed with 
raw-edged knives, dazed with crushing clubs, pierced 
with bristling arrows, spent and faint and bleeding, 
Zaldivar and his hero-handful fought their way inch 
by inch, step by step, clubbing their heavy guns, 
hewing with their short swords, parrying deadly 



138 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

blows, pulling the barbed arrows from their quiver- 
ing flesh. On, on, on they pressed, shouting the 
gallant war-cry of Santiago, driving the stubborn foe 
before them by still more stubborn valor, until at 
last the Indians, fully convinced that these were 
no human foes, fled to the refuge of their fort-like 
houses, and there was room for the reeling Span- 
iards to draw breath. Then thrice again the sum- 
mons to surrender was duly read before the strange 
tenements, each near a thousand feet long, and 
looking like a flight of gigantic steps carved from 
one rock. Zaldivar even now wished to spare un- 
necessary bloodshed, and demanded only that the 
assassins of his brother and countrymen should be 
given up for punishment. All others who should 
surrender and become subjects of " Our Lord the 
King " should be well treated. But the dogged 
Indians, like wounded wolves in their den, stuck in 
their barricaded houses, and refused all terms of 
peace. 

The rock was captured, but the town remained. 
A pueblo is a fortress in itself; and now Zaldivar 
had to storm Acoma house by house, room by room. 
The little pedrero was dragged in front of the first 
row of houses, and soon began to deliver its slow 
fire. As the adobe walls crumbled under the steady 
battering of the stone cannon-balls, they only formed 
great barricades of clay, which even our modern 
artillery would not pierce ; and each had to be car- 
ried separately at the point of the sword. Some 
of the fallen houses caught fire from their own 




«*%'«^ 







THE STORMING OP THE SKY-CITY. 



39 



fogones ; ^ and soon a stifling smoke hung over the 
town, from which issued the shrieks of women and 
babes and the defiant yells of the warriors. The 
humane Zaldivar made every effort to save the 
women and children, at great risk of self; but 
numbers perished beneath the falling walls of their 
own houses. 

This fearful storming lasted until noon of Jan- 
uary 24. Now and then bands of warriors made 
sorties, and tried to cut their way through the Span- 
ish line. Many sprang in desperation over the cliff, 
and were dashed to pieces at its foot ; and two In- 
dians who made that incredible leap survived it as 
miraculously as had the four Spaniards in the earlier 
massacre, and made their escape. 

At last, at noon of the third day, the old men 
came forth to sue for mercy, which was at once 
granted. The moment they surrendered, their re- 
bellion was forgotten and their treachery forgiven. 
There was no need of further punishment. The 
ringleaders in the murder of Zaldivar's brother were 
all dead, and so were nearly all the Navajo allies. It 
was the most bloody struggle New Mexico ever saw. 
In this three days' fight the Indians lost five hun- 
dred slain and many wounded ; and of the surviving 
Spaniards not one but bore to his grave many a 
ghastly scar as mementos of Acoma. The town 
was so nearly destroyed that it had all to be rebuilt ; 
and the infinite labor with which the patient people 
had brought up that cliff on their backs all the stones 
1 Fireplaces. 



140 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

and timber and clay to build a many-storied town 
for nearly a thousand souls was all to be repeated. 
Their crops, too, and all other supplies, stored in 
dark little rooms of the terraced houses, had been' 
destroyed, and they were in sore want. Truly a 
bitter punishment had been sent them by '' those 
above " for their treachery to Juan de Zaldivar. 

When his men had sufficiently recovered from their 
wounds Vicente de Zaldivar, the leader of probably 
the most wonderful capture in history, marched vic- 
torious back to San Gabriel de los Espanoles, taking 
with him eighty young Acoma girls, whom he sent 
to be educated by the nuns in Old Mexico. What a 
shout must have gone up from the gray walls of the 
little colony when its anxious watchers saw at last 
the wan and unexpected tatters of its little army 
pricking slowly homeward across the snows on jaded 
steeds ! 

The rest of the Pueblos, who had been lying de- 
mure as cats, with claws sheathed, but every lithe 
muscle ready to spring, were fairly paralyzed with 
awe. They had looked to see the Spaniards de- 
feated, if not crushed, at Acoma ; and then a swift 
rising of all the tribes would have made short work 
of the remaining invaders. But now the impossible 
had happened ! Ah'ko, the proud sky-city of the 
Queres ; Ah'ko, the cliff-girt and impregnable, — 
had fallen before the pale strangers ! Its brave 
warriors had come to naught, its strong houses were 
a chaos of smoking ruins, its wealth was gone, its 
people nearly wiped from off the earth I What use 



THE STORMING OF THE SKY-CITY. 141 

to Struggle against "such men of power," — these 
strange wizards who must be precious to " those 
above," else they never could have such superhuman 
prowess? The strung sinews relaxed, and the great 
cat began to purr as though she had never dreamt 
of mousing. There was no more thought of a re- 
bellion against the Spaniards ; and the Indians even 
went out of their way to court the favor of these 
awesome strangers. They brought Oiiate the news 
of the fall of Acoma several days before Zaldivar 
and his heroes got back to the little colony, and 
even were mean enough to deliver to him two Queres 
refugees from that dread field who had sought shel- 
ter among them. Thenceforth Governor Onate had 
no more trouble with the Pueblos. 

But Acoma itself seemed to take the lesson to 
heart less than any of them. Too crushed and 
broken to think of further war with its invincible 
foes, it still remained bitterly hostile to the Span- 
iards for full thirty years, until it was again con- 
quered by a heroism as splendid as Zaldivar's, 
though in a far different way. 

In 1629 Fray Juan Ramirez, "the Apostle of 
Acoma," left Santa F^ alone to found a mission in 
that lofty home of fierce barbarians. An escort of 
soldiers was offered him, but he declined it, and 
started unaccompanied and on foot, with no other 
weapon than his crucifix. Tramping his foot- 
sore and dangerous way, he came after many days 
to the foot of the great " island " of rock, and began 
the ascent. As soon as the savages saw a stranger 



142 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

of the hated people, they rallied to the brink of the 
cliff and poured down a great flight of arrows, some 
of which pierced his robes. Just then a little girl 
of Acoma, who was standing on the edge of the 
cliff, grew frightened at the wild actions of her 
people, and losing her balance tumbled over the 
precipice. By a strange providence she fell but a 
few yards, and landed on a sandy ledge near the 
Fray, but out of sight of her people, who presumed 
that she had fallen the whole height of the cliff. 
Fray Juan cHmbed to her, and carried her unhurt to 
the top of the rock ; and seeing this apparent mira- 
cle, the savages were disarmed, and received him as 
a good wizard. The good man dwelt alone there 
in Acoma for more than twenty years, loved by the 
natives as a father, and teaching his swarthy con- 
verts so successfully that in time many knew their 
catechism, and could read and write in Spanish. 
Besides, under his direction they built a large 
church with enormous labor. When he died, in 
1664, the Acomas from being the fiercest Indians 
had become the gentlest in New Mexico, and were 
among the furthest advanced in civilization. But a 
few years after his death came the uprising of all 
the Pueblos ; and in the long and disastrous wars 
which followed the church was destroyed, and 
the fruits of the brave Fray's work largely disap- 
peared. In that rebellion Fray Lucas Maldonado, 
who was then the missionary to Acoma, was butch- 
ered by his flock on the loth or nth of August, 
1680. In November, 1692, Acoma voluntarily sur- 



THE STORMING OP THE SKY-CITY. 143 

rendered to the reconqueror of New Mexico, Diego 
de Vargas. Within a few years, however, it rebelled 
again; and in August, 1696, Vargas marched against 
it, but was unable to storm the rock. But by de- 
grees the Pueblos grew to lasting peace with the 
humane conquerors, and to merit the kindness 
which was steadily proffered them. The mis- 
sion at Acoma was re-established about the year 
1 700 ; and there stands to-day a huge church which 
is one of the most interesting in the world, by rea- 
son of the infinite labor and patience which built it. 
The last attempt at a Pueblo uprising was in 1728 ; 
but Acoma was not implicated in it at all. 

The strange stone stairway by which Fray Juan 
Ramirez climbed first to his dangerous parish in the 
teeth of a storm of arrows, is used by the people of 
Acoma to this day, and is still called by them el 
camino del padre (the path of the Father) . 



144 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



THE SOLDIER POET. 

BUT now to go back a little. The young officer 
who made that superb leap across the chasm 
at Acoma, pushed back the bridge-log, and so saved 
the lives of his comrades, and indirectly of all the 
Spanish in New Mexico, was Captain Caspar Perez 
de Villagran.^ He was highly educated, being a 
graduate of a Spanish university ; young, ambitious, 
fearless, and athletic ; a hero among the heroes of 
the New World, and a chronicler to whom we are 
greatly indebted. The six extant copies of the fat 
little parchment-bound book of his historical poem, 
in thirty-four heroic cantos, are each worth many 
times their weight in gold. It is a great pity that 
we could not have had a Villagran for each of the 
campaigns of the pioneers of America, to tell us 
more of the details of those superhuman dangers 
and hardships, — for most of the chroniclers of that 
day treat such episodes as briefly as we would a trip 
from New York to Brooklyn. 

The leaping of the chasm was not Captain Villa- 
gran's only connection with the bloody doings at 
Acoma in the winter of 1598-99. He came very 
^ Pronounced Veel-yah-grahn. 



THE SOLDIER POET. i^t 

near being a victim of the first massacre, in which 
Juan de Zaldivar and his men perished, and escaped 
that fate only to suffer hardships as fearful as death. 
In the fall of 1598 four soldiers deserted Onate's 
little army at San Gabriel ; and the governor sent 
Villagran, with three or four soldiers, to arrest them. 
It is hard to say what a sheriff nowadays would think 
if called upon to follow four desperadoes nearly a 
thousand miles across such a desert, and with a 
posse so small. But Captain Villagran kept the 
trail of the deserters ; and after a pursuit of at least 
nine hundred miles, overtook them in southern 
Chihuahua, Mexico. The deserters made a fierce 
resistance. Two were killed by the officers, and two 
escaped. Villagran left his little posse there, and 
retraced his dangerous nine hundred miles alone. 
Arriving at the pueblo of Puaray, on the west bank 
of the Rio Grande, opposite Bernalillo, he learned 
that his commander Onate had just marched west, 
on the perilous trip to Moqui, of which you have 
already heard. Villagran at once turned westward, 
and started alone to follow and overtake his country- 
men. The trail was easily followed, for the Spaniards 
had the only horses within what is now the United 
States ; but the lonely follower of it was beset with 
continual danger and hardship. He came in sight 
of Acoma just too late to witness the massacre of 
Juan de Zaldivar and the fearful fall of the five 
Spaniards. The survivors had already left the fatal 
spot ; and when the natives saw a solitary Spaniard 
approaching, they descended from their rock citadel 
10 



146 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

to surround and slay him. Villagran had no fire- 
arms, nothing but his sword, dagger, and shield. 
Although he knew nothing of the dreadful events 
which had just occurred, he became suspicious of 
the manner in which the savages were hemming 
him in ; and though his horse was gaunt from its 
long journey, he spurred it to a gallant effort, 
and fought his way through the closing circle of 
Indians. He kept up his flight until well into the 
night, making a long circuit to avoid coming too near 
the town, and at last got down exhausted from his 
exhausted horse, and laid himself on the bare earth 
to rest. When he awoke it was snowing hard, and 
he was half buried under the cold, white blanket. 
Remounting, he pushed on in the darkness, to get 
as far as possible from Acoma ere daylight should 
betray him. Suddenly horse and rider fell into a 
deep pit, which the Indians had dug for a trap 
and covered with brush and earth. The fall killed 
the poor horse, and Villagran himself was badly hurt 
and stunned. At last, however, he managed to crawl 
out of the pit, to the great joy of his faithful dog, 
who sat whining and shivering upon the edge. The 
soldier-poet speaks most touchingly of this dumb 
companion of his long and perilous journey, and 
evidently loved it with the affection which only a 
brave man can give and a faithful dog merit. 

Starting again on foot, Villagran soon lost his 
way in that trackless wilderness. For four days and 
four nights he wandered without a morsel of food 
or a drop of water, — for the snow had already dis- 



THE SOLDIER POET. 147 

appeared. Many a man has fasted longer under 
equal hardships ; but only those who have tasted 
the thirst of the arid lands can form the remotest 
conception of the meaning of ninety-six hours with- 
out water. Two days of that thirst is often fatal to 
strong men ; and that Villagran endured four was 
little short of miraculous. At last, fairly dying of 
thirst, with dry, swollen tongue, hard and rough as a 
file, projecting far beyond his teeth, he was reduced 
to the sad necessity of slaying his faithful dog, which 
he did with tears of manly remorse. Calling the 
poor brute to him, he dispatched it with his sword, 
and greedily drank the warm blood. This gave him 
strength to stagger on a little farther; and just as 
he was sinking to the sand to die, he spied a little 
hollow in a large rock ahead. Crawling feebly to 
it, he found to his joy that a little snow-water 
remained in the cavity. Scattered about, were a 
few grains of corn, which seemed a godsend ; and 
he devoured them ravenously. 

He had now given up all hope of overtaking his 
commander, and decided to turn back and try to 
walk that grim two hundred miles to San Gabriel. 
But he was too far gone for the body longer to obey 
the heroic soul, and would have perished miserably 
by the little rock tank but for a strange chance. 

As he lay there, faint and helpless, he suddenly 
heard voices approaching. He concluded that the 
Indians had trailed him, and gave himself up for 
lost, for he was too weak to fight. But at last his 
ear caught the accent of Spain ; and though it was 



148 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

spoken by hoarse, rough soldiers, you may be sure 
he thought it the sweetest sound in all the world. 
It chanced that the night before, some of the horses 
of Ofiate's camp had strayed away, and a small squad 
of soldiers was sent out to catch them. In following 
the trail of the runaways, they came in sight of Cap- 
tain Villagran. Luckily they saw him, for he could 
no longer shout nor run after them. Tenderly they 
lifted up the wounded officer and bore him back to 
camp ; and there, under the gentle nursing of bearded 
men, he slowly recovered strength, and in time be- 
came again the daring athlete of other days. He 
accompanied Oiiate on that long, desert march ; and 
a few months later was at the storming of Acoma, 
and performed the astounding feat which ranks as 
one of the remarkable individual heroisms of the 
New World. 



THE PIONEER MISSIONARIES. 149 



VI. 

THE PIONEER MISSIONARIES. 

TO pretend to tell the story of the Spanish pio- 
neering of the Americas without special atten- 
tion to the missionary pioneers, would be very poor 
justice and very poor history. In this, even more 
than in other qualities, the conquest was unique. 
The Spaniard not only found and conquered, but 
converted. His religious earnestness was not a 
whit behind his bravery. As has been true of all 
nations that have entered new lands, — and as we 
ourselves later entered this, — his first step had to 
be to subdue the savages who opposed him. But 
as soon as he had whipped these fierce grown- 
children, he began to treat them with a great and 
noble mercy, — a mercy none too common even now, 
and in that cruel time of the whole world almost 
unheard of. He never robbed the brown first 
Americans of their homes, nor drove them on and 
on before him ; on the contrary, he protected and 
secured to them by special laws the undisturbed 
possession of their lands for all time. It is due to 
the generous and manly laws made by Spain three 
hundred years ago, that our most interesting and 
advanced Indians, the Pueblos, enjoy to-day full 



150 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

security in their lands ; while nearly all others (who 
never came fully under Spanish dominion) have 
been time after time ousted from lands our govern- 
ment had solemnly given to them. 

That was the beauty of an Indian policy which 
was ruled, not by politics, but by the unvarying prin- 
ciple of humanity. The Indian was first required 
to be obedient to his new government. He could 
not learn obedience in everything all at once ; but 
he must at least refrain from butchering his new 
neighbors. As soon as he learned that lesson, he 
was insured protection in his rights of home and 
family and property. Then, as rapidly as such a 
vast work could be done by an army of missionaries 
who devoted their lives to the dangerous task, he 
was educated to citizenship and Christianity. It is 
almost impossible for us, in these quiet days, to 
comprehend what it was to convert a savage half- 
world. In our part of North America there have 
never been such hopeless tribes as the Spaniards 
met in Mexico and other southern lands. Never 
did any other people anywhere complete such a 
stupendous missionary work. To begin to under- 
stand the difficulties of that conversion, we must 
look into an appalling page of history. 

Most Indians and savage peoples have religions as 
unlike ours as are their social organizations. There 
are few tribes that dream of one Supreme Being. 
Most of them worship many gods, — " gods " whose 
attributes are very like those of the worshipper; 
*'gods " as ignorant and cruel and treacherous as he. 



THE PIONEER MISSIONARIES. 15 1 

It is a ghastly thing to study these rehgions, and to 
see what dark and revolting qualities ignorance can 
deify. The merciless gods of India, who are sup- 
posed to delight in the crushing of thousands under 
the wheels of Juggernaut, and in the sacrificing of 
babes to the Ganges, and in the burning alive of girl- 
widows, are fair examples of what the benighted can 
believe ; and the horrors of India were fully paralleled 
in America. The religions of our North American 
Indians had many astounding and dreadful features ; 
but they were mild and civilized compared with the 
hideous rites of Mexico and the southern lands. To 
understand something of what the Spanish mission- 
aries had to combat throughout America, aside from 
the common danger, let us glance at the condition 
of affairs in Mexico at their coming. 

The Nahuatl, or Aztecs, and similar Indian tribes 
of ancient Mexico, had the general pagan creed of 
all American Indians, with added horrors of their 
own. They were in constant bhnd dread of their 
innumerable savage gods, — for to them everything 
they could not see and understand, and nearly every- 
thing they could, was a divinity. But they could not 
conceive of any such divinity as one they could love ; 
it was always something to be afraid of, and mor- 
tally afraid of. Their whole attitude of life was one 
of dodging the cruel blows of an unseen hand ; of 
placating some fierce god who could not love, but 
might be bribed not to destroy. They could not 
conceive a real creation, nor that anything could be 
without father and mother : stones and stars and 



152 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

winds and gods had to be born the same as men. 
Their " heaven," if they could have understood such 
a word, was crowded with gods, each as individual 
and personal as we, with greater powers than we, but 
with much the same weaknesses and passions and 
sins. In fact, they had invented and arranged gods by 
their own savage standards, giving them the powers 
they themselves most desired, but unable to attribute 
virtues they could not understand. So, too, in judg- 
ing what would please these gods, they went by what 
would please themselves. To have bloody ven- 
geance on their enemies ; to rob and slay, or be paid 
tribute for not robbing and slaying ; to be richly 
dressed and well fed, — these, and other like things 
which seemed to them the highest personal ambi- 
tions, they thought must be likewise pleasing to 
" those above." So they spent most of their time 
and anxiety in buying off these strange gods, who 
were even more dreaded than savage neighbors. 

Their ideas of a god were graphically expressed 
in the great stone idols of which Mexico was once 
full, some of which are still preserved in the muse- 
ums. They are often of heroic size, and are carved 
from the hardest stone with great painstaking, but 
their faces and figures are indescribably dreadful. 
Such an idol as that of the grim Huitzilopochtli was 
as horrible a thing as human ingenuity ever invented, 
and the same grotesque hideousness runs through all 
the long list of Mexican idols. 

These idols were attended with the most servile 
care^ and dressed in the richest ornaments known tg 



THE PIONEER MISSIONARIES. 153 

Indian wealth. Great strings of turquoise, — the 
most precious " gem " of the American aborigines, — 
and really precious mantles of the brilliant feathers 
of tropic birds, and gorgeous shells were hung lav- 
ishly upon those great stone nightmares. Thousands 
of men devoted their lives to the tending of the 
dumb deities, and humbled and tortured themselves 
unspeakably to please them. 

But gifts and care were not enough. Treachery 
to his friends was still to be feared from such a god. 
He must still further be bought off; everything that 
to an Indian seemed valuable was proffered to the 
Indian's god, to keep him in good humor. And 
since human life was the most precious thing an 
Indian could understand, it became his most im- 
portant and finally his most frequent offering. To 
the Indian it seemed no crime to take a life to 
please a god. He had no idea of retribution after 
death, and he came to look upon human sacrifice 
as a legitimate, moral, and even divine institution. 
In time, such sacrifices became of almost daily oc- 
currence at each of the numberless temples. It was 
the most valued form of worship ; so great was its 
importance that the officials or priests had to go 
through a more onerous training than does any min- 
ister of a Christian faith. They could reach their 
position only by pledging and keeping up unceasing 
and awful self-deprivation and self-mutilation. 

Human lives were offered not only to one or two 
principal idols of each community, but each town 
had also many minor fetiches to which such sacri- 



154 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

fices were made on stated occasions. So fixed was 
the custom of sacrifice, and so proper was it deemed, 
that when Cortez came to Cempohual the natives 
could think of no other way to welcome him with 
sufficient honor, and in perfect cordiality proposed 
to offer up human sacrifices to him. It is hardly 
necessary to add that Cortez sternly dechned this 
pledge of hospitality. 

These rites were mostly performed on the teocallis, 
or sacrificial mounds, of which there were one or 
more in every Indian town. These were huge arti- 
ficial mounds of earth, built in the shape of trun- 
cated pyramids, and faced all over with stone. They 
were from fifty to two hundred feet high, and some- 
times many hundreds of feet square at the base. 
Upon the flat top of the pyramid stood a small 
tower, — the dingy chapel which enclosed the idol. 
The grotesque face of the stone deity looked down 
upon a cylindrical stone which had a bowl-like cav- 
ity in the top, — the altar, or sacrificial stone. This 
was generally carved also, and sometimes with re- 
markable skill and detail. The famous so-called 
"Aztec Calendar Stone" in the National Museum 
of Mexico, which once gave rise to so many wild 
speculations, is merely one of these sacrificial altars, 
dating from before Columbus. It is a wonderful 
piece of Indian stone-carving. 

The idol, the inner walls of the temple, the floor, 
the altar, were always wet with the most precious 
fluid on earth. In the bowl human hearts smoul- 
dered. Black-robed wizards, their faces painted 



THE PIONEER MISSIONARIES. 155 

black with white rings about eyes and mouth, their 
hair matted with blood, their faces raw from con- 
stant self-torture, forever flitted to and fro, keeping 
watch by night and day, ready always for the vic- 
tims whom that dreadful superstition was always 
ready to bring. The supply of victims was drawn 
from prisoners taken in war, and from slaves paid 
as tribute by conquered tribes ; and it took a vast 
supply. Sometimes as many as five hundred were 
sacrificed on one altar on one great day. They 
were stretched naked upon the sacrificial stone, and 
butchered in a manner too horrible to be described 
here. Their palpitating hearts were offered to the 
idol, and then thrown into the great stone bowl ; while 
the bodies were kicked down the long stone stair- 
way to the bottom of the great mound, where they 
were seized upon by the eager crowd. The Mexi- 
cans were not cannibals regularly and as a matter 
of taste ; but they devoured these bodies as part of 
their grim religion. 

It is too revolting to go more into detail concern- 
ing these rites. Enough has been said to give some 
idea of the moral barrier encountered by the Span- 
ish missionaries when they came to such blood- 
thirsty savages with a gospel which teaches love and 
the universal brotherhood of man. Such a creed 
was as unintelligible to the Indian as white black- 
ness would be to us ; and the struggle to make him 
understand was one of the most enormous and ap- 
parently hopeless ever undertaken by human teach- 
ers. Before the missionaries could make these 



156 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

savages even listen to — much less understand — • 
Christianity, they had the dangerous task of prov- 
ing this paganism worthless. The Indian believed 
absolutely in the power of his gory stone-god. If 
he should neglect his idol, he felt sure the idol 
would punish and destroy him ; and of course he 
would not believe anything that could be told him 
to the contrary. The missionary had not only to say, 
''Your idol is worthless ; he cannot hurt anybody; 
he is only a stone, and if you kick him he cannot 
punish you," but he had to prove it. No Indian was 
going to be so foolhardy as to try the experiment, 
and the new teacher had to do it in person. Of course 
he could not even do that at first : for if he had 
begun his missionary work by offering any indignity 
to one of those ugly gods of porphyry, its '' priests " 
would have slain him on the spot. But when the 
Indians saw at last that the missionary was not 
struck down by some supernatural power for speak- 
ing against their gods, there was one step gained. 
By degrees he could touch the idol, and they saw 
that he was still unharmed. At last he overturned 
and broke the cruel images ; and the breathless and 
terrified worshippers began to distrust and despise 
the cowardly divinities they had played the slave to, 
but whom a stranger could insult and abuse with 
impunity. It was only by this rude logic, which the 
debased savages could understand, that the Span- 
ish missionaries proved to the Indians that human 
sacrifice was a human mistake and not the will of 
"Those Above." It was a wonderful achievement, 



THE PIONEER MISSIONARIES. 157 

just the uprooting of this one, but worst, custom of 
the Indian rehgion, — a custom strengthened by cen- 
turies of constant practice. But the Spanish apostles 
were equal to the task ; and the infinite faith and 
zeal and patience which finally abolished human sac- 
rifice in Mexico, led gradually on, step by step, to 
the final conversion of a continent and a half of 
savages to Christianity. 



158 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



VII. 

THE CHURCH-BUILDERS IN NEW 
MEXICO. 

TO give even a skeleton of Spanish missionary 
work in the two Americas would fill several 
volumes. The most that can be done here is to 
take a sample leaf from that fascinating but formid- 
able record ; and for that I shall outline something 
of what was done in an area particularly interesting 
to us, — the single province of New Mexico. There 
were many fields which presented even greater 
obstacles, and cost more lives of uncomplaining 
martyrs and more generations of discouraging toil ; 
but it is safe to take a modest example, as well as 
one which so much concerns our own national 
history. 

New Mexico and Arizona — the real wonderland 
of the United States — were discovered in 1539, as 
you know, by that Spanish missionary whom every 
young American should remember with honor, — 
Fray Marcos, of Nizza. You have had glimpses, 
too, of the achievements of Fray Ramirez, Fray 
Padilla, and other missionaries in that forbidding 
land, and have gained some idea of the hardships 
which were common to all their brethren ; for the 



THE CHURCH-BUILDERS. 159 

wonderful journeys, the lonely self-sacrifice, the 
gentle zeal, and too often the cruel deaths of these 
men were not exceptions, but fair types of what 
the apostle to the Southwest must expect. 

There have been missionaries elsewhere whose 
flocks were as long ungrateful and murderous, but 
few if any who were more out of the world. New 
Mexico has been for three hundred and fifty years, 
and is to-day, largely a wilderness, threaded with a 
few slender oases. To people of the Eastern States 
a desert seems very far off; but there are hundreds 
of thousands of square miles in our own Southwest 
to this day where the traveller is very likely to die of 
thirst, and where poor wretches every year do perish 
by that most awful of deaths. Even now there is 
no trouble in finding hardship and danger in New 
Mexico ; and once it was one of the cruellest wil- 
dernesses conceivable. Scarce a decade has gone 
by since an end was put to the Indian wars and 
harassments, which had lasted continuously for 
more than three centuries. When Spanish colonist 
or Spanish missionary turned his back on Old Mex- 
ico to traverse the thousand-mile, roadless desert to 
New Mexico, he took his Hfe in his hands ; and 
every day in that savage province he was in equal 
danger. If he escaped death by thirst or starvation 
by the way, if the party was not wiped out by the 
merciless Apache, then he settled in the wilderness 
as far from any other home of white men as Chicago 
is from Boston. If a missionary, he was generally 
alone with a flock of hundreds of cruel savages ; 



l6o THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

if a soldier or a farmer, he had from two hundred 
to fifteen hundred friends in an area as big as New 
England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio com- 
bined, in the very midst of a hundred thousand 
swarthy foes whose war-whoop he was likely to hear 
at any moment, and never had long chance to for- 
get. He came poor, and that niggard land never 
made him rich. Even in the beginning of this 
century, when some began to have large flocks 
of sheep, they were often left penniless by one 
night's raid of Apaches or Navajos. 

Such was New Mexico when the missionaries 
came, and very nearly such it remained for more 
than three hundred years. If the most enlightened 
and hopeful mind in the Old World could have 
looked across to that arid land, it would never have 
dreamed that soon the desert was to be dotted with 
churches, — and not little log or mud chapels, but 
massive stone masonries whose ruins stand to-day, 
the noblest in our North America. But so it was ; 
neither wilderness nor savage could balk that great 
zeal. 

The first church in what is now the United States 
was founded in St. Augustine, Fla., by Fray Fran- 
cisco de Pareja in 1560, — but there were many 
Spanish churches in America a half century earlier 
yet. The several priests whom Coronado brought 
to New Mexico in 1540 did brave missionary 
work, but were soon killed by the Indians. The 
first church in New Mexico and the second in 
the United States was founded in September, 



THE CHURCH-BUILDERS. i6l 

i59^j by the ten missionaries who accompanied 
Juan de Onate, the colonizer. It was a small chapel 
at San Gabriel de los Espaiioles (now Chamita). 
San Gabriel was deserted in 1605, when Onate 
founded Santa Fe, though it is probable that the 
chapel was still occasionally used. In time, how- 
ever, it fell into decay. As late as 1680 the ruins of 
this honorable old church were still visible ; but now 
they are quite indistinguishable. One of the first 
things after establishing the new town of Santa Fe 
was of course to build a church, — and here, by 
about 1606, was reared the third church in the 
United States. It did not long meet the growing 
requirements of the colony; and in 1622 Fray 
Alonzo de Benavides, the historian, laid the founda- 
tions of the parish church of Santa F6, which was 
finished in 1627. The church of San Miguel in the 
same old city was built after 1636. Its original 
walls are still standing, and form part of a church 
which is used to-day. It was partly destroyed in 
the Pueblo rebellion of 1680, and was restored in 
1 710. The new cathedral of Santa Fe is built 
over the remnants of the still more ancient parish 
church. 

In 1 6 1 7 — three years before Plymouth Rock — 
there were already eleve?i churches in use in New 
Mexico. Santa Fe was the only Spanish town ; but 
there were also churches at the dangerous Indian 
pueblos of Galisteo and Pecos, two at Jemez 
(nearly one hundred miles west of Santa F^, and 
in an appalling wilderness), Taos (as far north), 
II 



1 62 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

San Yldefonso, Santa Clara, Sandia, San Felipe, and 
Santo Domingo. It was a wonderful achievement 
for each lonely missionary — for they had neither 
civil nor military assistance in their parishes — so 
soon to have induced his barbarous flock to build 
a big stone church, and worship there the new white 
God. The churches in the two Jemez pueblos 
had to be abandoned about 1622 on account of 
incessant harassment by the Navajos, who from 
time immemorial had ravaged that section, but 
were occupied again in 1626. The Spaniards were 
confined by the necessities of the desert, so far 
as home-making went, to the valley of the Rio 
Grande, which runs about north and south through 
the middle of New Mexico. But their missionaries 
were under no such limitation. Where the colonists 
could not exist, they could pray and teach ; and 
very soon they began to penetrate the deserts which 
stretch far on either side from that narrow ribbon of 
colonizable land. At Zuiii, far west of the river and 
three hundred miles from Santa Fe, the missionaries 
had established themselves as early as 1629. Soon 
they had six churches in six of the " Seven Cities of 
Cibola" (the Zufii towns), of which the one at 
Chyanahue is still beautifully preserved ; and in 
the same period they had taken foothold two hun- 
dred miles deeper yet in the desert, and built three 
churches among the wondrous cliff-towns of Moqui. 
Down the Rio Grande there was similar activity. 
At the ancient pueblo of San Antonio de Senecu, 
iiow nearly obliterated, a church was founded in 



THE CHURCH-BUILDERS. 163 

1629 by Fray Antonio de Arteaga ; and the same 
brave man, in the same year, founded another at the 
pueblo of Nuestra Sefiora del Socorro, — now the 
American town of Socorro. The church in the 
pueblo of Picuries, far in the northern mountains, 
was built before 1632, for in that year Fray Ascen- 
cion de Zarate was buried in it. The church at 
Isleta, about in the centre of New Mexico, was built 
before 1635. ^ ^^^ miles above Glorieta, one can 
see from the windows of a train on the Santa F6 
route a large and impressive adobe ruin, whose 
fine walls dream away in that enchanted sunshine. 
It is the old church of the pueblo of Pecos; and 
those walls were reared two hundred and seventy- 
five years ago. The pueblo, once the largest in 
New Mexico, was deserted in 1840; and its great 
quadrangle of many-storied Indian houses is in utter 
ruin ; but above their gray mounds still tower the 
walls of the old church which was built before there 
was a Saxon in New England. You see the " mud 
brick," as some contemptuously call the adobe, is 
not such a contemptible thing, even for braving the 
storms of centuries. There was a church at the 
pueblo of Namb^ by 1642. In 1662 Fray Garcia 
de San Francisco founded a church at El Paso del 
Norte, on the present boundary-line between Mexico 
and the United States, — a dangerous frontier mis- 
sion, hundreds of miles alike from the Spanish 
settlements in Old and New Mexico. 

The missionaries also crossed the mountains east 
of the Rio Grande, and established missions among 



164 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

the Pueblos who dwelt in the edge of the great 
plains. Fray Geronimo de la Liana founded the 
noble church at Cuaray about 1642 ; and soon after 
came those at Ab6, Tenabo, and Tabira (better, 
though incorrectly, known now as The Gran Qui- 
vira). The churches at Cuaray, Ab6, and Tabira 
are the grandest ruins in the United States, and 
much finer than many ruins which Americans go 
abroad to see. The second and larger church at 
Tabira was built between 1660 and 1670; and at 
about the same time and in the same region — 
though many thirsty miles away — the churches at 
Tajique ^ and Chilili. Acoma, as you know, had a 
permanent missionary by 1629; and he built a 
church. Besides all these, the pueblos of Zia, Santa 
Ana, Tesuque, Pojoaque, San Juan, San Marcos, San 
Lazaro, San Cristobal, Alameda, Santa Cruz, and 
Cochiti had each a church by 1680. That shows 
something of the thoroughness of Spanish missionary 
work. A century before our nation was born, the 
Spanish had built in one of our Territories half a hun- 
dred permanent churches, nearly all of stone, and 
nearly all for the express benefit of the Indians. That 
is a missionary record which has never been equalled 
elsewhere in the United States even to this day ; and 
in all our country we had not built by that time so 
many churches for ourselves. 

A glimpse at the Hfe of the missionary to New 
Mexico in the days before there was an English- 
speaking preacher in the whole western hemisphere 
1 Pronounced Tah-/^^<?-ky. 



THE CHURCH-BUILDERS. 165 

is Strangely fascinating to all who love that lonely 
heroism which does not need applause or compan- 
ionship to keep it alive. To be brave in battle or 
any similar excitement is a very easy thing. But to 
be a hero alone and unseen, amid not only danger 
but every hardship and discouragement, is quite 
another matter. 

The missionary to New Mexico had of course to 
come first from Old Mexico, — or, before that, from 
Spain. Some of these quiet, gray-robed men had 
already seen such wanderings and such dangers as 
even the Stanleys of nowadays do not know. They 
had to furnish their own vestments and church furni- 
ture, and to pay for their own transportation from 
Mexico to New Mexico, — for very early a '' hne " of 
semi-annual armed expeditions across the bitter 
intervening wilderness was arranged. The fare 
was ^266, which made serious havoc with the 
good man's salary of ^150 a year (at which figure 
the salaries remained up to 1665, when they were 
raised to ^330, payable every three years). It was 
not much like a call to a fashionable pulpit in these 
times. Out of this meagre pay — which was all the 
synod itself could afford to give him — he had to 
pay all the expenses of himself and his church. 

Arriving, after a perilous trip, in perilous New 
Mexico, — and the journey and the Territory were 
still dangerous in the present generation, — the mis- 
sionary proceeded first to Santa F^. His superior 
there soon assigned him a parish ; and turning his 
back on the one little colony of his countrymen. 



1 66 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

the fray trudged on foot fifty, one hundred, or three 
hundred miles, as the case might be, to his new and 
unknown post. Sometimes an escort of three or 
four Spanish soldiers accompanied him ; but often he 
made that toilsome and perilous walk alone. His 
new parishioners received him sometimes with a 
storm of arrows, and sometimes in sullen silence. He 
could not speak to them, nor they to him ; and the 
very first thing he had to do was to learn from such 
unwilling teachers their strange tongue, — a language 
much more difficult to acquire than Latin, Greek, 
French, or German. Entirely alone among them, 
he had to depend upon himself and upon the un- 
tender mercies of his flock for Hfe and all its neces- 
sities. If they decided to kill him, there was no 
possibility of resistance. If they refused him food, 
he must starve. If he became sick or crippled, there 
were no nurses or doctors for him except these 
treacherous savages. I do not think there was ever 
in history a picture of more absolute loneliness and 
helplessness and hopelessness than the lives of these 
unheard-of martyrs; and as for mere danger, no 
man ever faced greater. 

The provision made for the support of the mis- 
sionaries was very simple. Besides the small salary 
paid him by the synod, the pastor must receive some 
help from his parish. This was a moral as well as 
a material necessity. That interest partly depends 
on personal giving, is a principle recognized in all 
churches. So at once the Spanish laws commanded 
from the Pueblos the same contribution to the 



THE CHURCH-BUILDERS. 167 

church as Moses himself estabhshed. Each Indian 
family was required to give the tithe and the first 
fruits to the church, just as they had always given 
them to their pagan cacique. This was no burden to 
the Indians, and it supported the priest in a very hum- 
ble way. Of course the Indians did not give a tithe ; 
at first they gave just as little as they could. The 
"father's" food was their corn, beans, and squashes, 
with only a little meat rarely from their hunts, — for 
it was a long time before there were flocks of cattle 
or sheep to draw from. He also depended on his 
unreliable congregation for help in cultivating his 
little plot of ground, for wood to keep him from 
freezing in those high altitudes, and even for water, 
^- since there were no waterworks nor even wells, 
and all water had to be brought considerable dis- 
tances in jars. Dependent wholly upon such sus- 
picious, jealous, treacherous helpers, the good man 
often suffered greatly from hunger and cold. There 
were no stores, of course, and if he could not get 
food from the Indians he must starve. Wood was 
in some cases twenty miles distant, as it is from 
Isleta to-day. His labors also were not small. He 
must not only convert these utter pagans to Chris- 
tianity, but teach them to read and write, to farm 
by better methods, and, in general, to give up their 
barbarism for civilization. 

How difficult it was to do this even the statesman 
of to-day can hardly measure ; but what was the price 
in blood is simple to be understood. It was not the 
killing now and then of one of these noble men by 



l68 THE SPANISH PIONEERS, 

his ungrateful flock, — it was almost a habit. It 
was not the sin of one or two towns. The pueblos 
of Taos, Picuries, San Yldefonso, Nambe, Pojoaque, 
Tesuque, Pecos, Galisteo, San Marcos, Santo Do- 
mingo, Cochiti, San Felipe, Puaray, Jemez, Acoma, 
Halona, Hauicu, Ahuatui, Mishongenivi, and Oraibe 
— twenty different towns — at one time or another 
murdered their respective missionaries. Some towns 
repeated the crime several times. Up to the year 
1 700, foi'ty of these quiet heroes in gray had been 
slain by the Indians in New Mexico, — two by the 
Apaches, but all the rest by their own flocks. Of 
these, one was poisoned ; the others died bloody and 
awful deaths. Even in the last century several mis- 
sionaries were killed by secret poison, — an evil art 
in which the Indians were and are remarkably adept ; 
and when the missionary had been killed, the Indians 
burned the church. 

One very important feature must not be lost sight 
of. Not only did these Spanish teachers achieve a 
missionary work unparalleled elsewhere by others, 
but they made a wonderful mark on the world's 
knowledge. Among them were some of the most 
important historians America has had ; and they 
were among the foremost scholars in every intel- 
lectual line, particularly in the study of languages. 
They were not merely chroniclers, but students of 
native antiquities, arts, and customs, — such histo- 
rians, in fact, as are paralleled only by those great 
classic writers, Herodotus and Strabo. In the long 
and eminent list of Spanish missionary authors 



THE CHURCH-BUILDERS. 169 

were such men as Torquemada, Sahagun, Motolinia, 
Mendieta, and many others ; and their huge vol- 
umes are among the greatest and most indispensa- 
ble helps we have to a study of the real history 
of America. 



1 70 THE SPANISH PIONEERS* 



VIII. 

ALVARADO'S LEAP. 

IF the reader should ever go to the City of Mexico, 
— as I hope he may, for that ancient town, which 
was old and populous when Columbus was born, is 
alive with romantic interest, — he will have pointed 
out to him, on the Rivera de San Cosme, the historic 
spot still known as El Salto de Alvarado. It is now 
a broad, civilized street, with horse-cars running, 
with handsome buildings, with quaint, contented folk 
sauntering to and fro, and with little outwardly to 
recall the terrors of that cruellest night in the history 
of America, — the Noche Triste. 

The leap of Alvarado is among the famous deeds 
in history, and the leaper was a striking figure in 
the pioneering of the New World. In the first great 
conquest he bore himself gallantly, and the story 
of his exploits then and thereafter would make a 
fascinating romance. A tall, handsome man, with 
yellow locks and ruddy face, young, impulsive, and 
generous, a brilliant soldier and charming comrade, 
he was a general favorite with Spaniard and Indian 
alike. Though for some reason not fully liked by 
Cortez, he was the conqueror's right-hand man, and 
throughout the conquest of Mexico had generally 



ALVARADaS LEAP. 171 

the post of greatest danger. He was a college man, 
and wrote a large, bold hand, — none too common 
an accomplishment in those days, you will remem- 
ber, — and signed a beautiful autograph. He was 
not a great leader of men like Cortez, — his valor 
sometimes ran away with his prudence ; but as 
a field-officer he was as dashing and brilliant as 
could be found. 

Captain Pedro de Alvarado was a native of Seville, 
and came to the New World in his young manhood, 
soon winning some recognition in Cuba. In 15 18 
he accompanied Grijalva in the voyage which dis- 
covered Mexico, and carried back to Cuba the few 
treasures they had collected. In the following year, 
when Cortez sailed to the conquest of the new and 
wonderful land, Alvarado accompanied him as his 
lieutenant. In all the startling feats of that romantic 
career he played a conspicuous part. In the crisis 
when it became necessary to seize the treacherous 
Moctezuma, Alvarado was active and prominent. 
He had much to do with Moctezuma during the 
latter's detention as a hostage ; and his frankness 
made him a great favorite with the captive war- 
chief. He was left in command of the little gar- 
rison at Mexico when Cortez marched off on his 
audacious but successful expedition against Narvaez, 
and discharged that responsible duty well. Before 
Cortez got back, came the symptoms of an Indian 
uprising, — the famous war-dance. Alvarado was 
alone, and had to meet the crisis on his own respon- 
sibility. But he was equal to the emergency. He 



172 



THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



understood the murderous meaning of this " ghost- 
dance," as every Indian-fighter does, and the way 
to meet it. In his unsuccessful attempt to capture 
the wizards who were stirring up the populace 
to massacre the strangers, Alvarado was severely 
wounded. But he bore his part in the desperate 
resistance to the Indian assaults, in which nearly 
every Spaniard was wounded. In the great fighting 
to hold their adobe stronghold, and the wild sorties 
to force back the flood of savages, the golden-haired 
lieutenant was always a prominent figure. When 
Cortez, who had now returned with his reinforce- 
ments, saw that Mexico was untenable and that their 
only salvation was in retreat from the lake city to 
the mainland, the post of honor fell to Alvarado. 
There were twelve hundred Spaniards and two 
thousand Tlaxcaltecan allies, and this force was di- 
vided into three commands. The vanguard was led 
by Juan Velasquez, the second division by Cortez, 
the third, upon which it was expected the brunt of 
pursuit would fall, by Alvarado. 

All was quiet when the Spaniards crept from their 
refuge to try to escape along the dyke. 

It was a rainy night, and intensely dark ; and 
with their horses' hoofs and little cannon muffled, 
the Spaniards moved as quietly as possible along the 
narrow bank, which stretched like a tongue from the 
island city to the mainland. 

This dyke was cut by three broad sluices, and to 
cross them the soldiers carried a portable bridge. 
But despite their care the savages promptly detected 



ALVAR ADO'S LEAP. 173 

the movement. Scarcely had they issued from their 
barracks and got upon the dyke, when the boom of 
the monster war-drum, tlapan huehuetl, from the 
summit of the pyramid of sacrifice, burst upon the 
still night, — the knell of their hopes. It is an awe- 
some sound still, the deep bellowing of that great 
three-legged drum, which is used to-day, and can 
be heard more than fifteen miles ; and to the Span- 
iards it was the voice of doom. Great bonfires shot 
up from the teocalli, and they could see the savages 
swarming to overwhelm them. 

Hurrying as fast as their wounds and burdens 
would permit, the Spaniards reached the first sluice 
in safety. They threw their bridge over the gulf, 
and began crossing. Then the Indians came swarm- 
ing in their canoes at either side of the dyke, and 
attacked with characteristic ferocity. The beset sol- 
diers fought as they struggled on. But as the artil- 
lery was crossing the bridge it broke, and down went 
cannon, horses, and men forever. Then began the 
indescribable horrors of "The Sad Night." There 
was no retreat for the Spaniards, for they were as- 
sailed on every side. Those behind were pushing on, 
and there was no staying even for that gap of black 
water. Over the brink man and horse were crowded 
in the darkness, and still those behind came on, until 
at last the channel was choked with corpses, and the 
survivors floundered across the chaos of their dead. 
Velasquez, the leader of the vanguard, was slain, and 
Spaniard and Tlaxcaltecan were falling like wheat 
before the sickle. The second sluice, as well as 



174 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

each side of the dyke, was blocked with canoes full 
of savage warriors ; and there was another sanguin- 
ary mel^e until this gap too was filled with slain, and 
over the bridge of human corpses the fugitives gained 
the other bank. Alvarado, fighting with the rear- 
most to hold in check the savages who followed 
along the dyke, was the last to cross ; and before 
he could follow his comrades the current suddenly 
broke through the ghastly obstruction, and swept the 
channel clear. His faithful horse had been killed 
under him ; he himself was sorely wounded ; his 
friends were gone, and the merciless foe hemmed 
him in. We cannot but be reminded of the Roman 

hero, — 

" Of him who held the bridge so well 
In the brave days of old." 

Alvarado's case was fully as desperate as that of 
Horatius ; and he rose as manlike to the occasion. 
With one swift glance about, he saw that to plunge 
into the flood would be sure death. So, with a 
supreme effort of his muscular frame, he thrust 
down his lance and sprang ! It was a distance 
of eighteen feet. Considerably longer jumps have 
been recorded. Our own Washington once made 
a running jump of over twenty feet in his ath- 
letic youth. But considering the surroundings, the 
darkness, his wounds, and his load of armor, the 
wonderful leap of Alvarado has perhaps never been 
surpassed : — 

" For fast his blood was flowing, 
And he was sore in pain ; 
And heavy was his armor, 
And spent with changing blows.*' 



ALVARADaS LEAP. 



175 



But the leap was made, and the heroic leaper 
staggered up the farther bank and rejoined his 
countrymen. 

From here the remnant fought, struggUng along 
the causeway, to the mainland. The Indians at 
last drew off from the pursuit, and the exhausted 
Spaniards had time to breathe and look about to 
see how many had escaped. The survivors were 
few in number. Small wonder if, as the legend tells, 
their stout-hearted general, used as he was to a stoic 
control of his feehngs, sat him down under the cy- 
press, which is still pointed out as the tree of the 
Noche Triste, and wept a strong man's tears as he 
looked upon the pitiful remnant of his brave army. 
Of the twelve hundred Spaniards eight hundred and 
sixty had perished, and of the survivors not one but 
was wounded. Two thousand of his allies, the Tlax- 
caltecan Indians, had also been slain. Indeed, had 
it not been that the savages tried less to kill than 
to capture the Spanish for a more horrible death by 
the sacrificial knife, not one would have escaped. 
As it was, the survivors saw later three score of their 
comrades butchered upon the altar of the great 
teocalli. 

All the artillery was lost, and so was all the 
treasure. Not a grain of powder was left in con- 
dition to be used, and their armor was battered out 
of recognition. Had the Indians pursued now, the 
exhausted men would have fallen easy victims. But 
after that terrific struggle the savages were resting 
too, and the Spaniards were permitted to escape. 



176 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

They struck out for the friendly pueblo of Tlaxcala 
by a circuitous route to avoid their enemies, but 
were attacked at every intervening pueblo. In the 
plains of Otumba was their most desperate hour. 
Surrounded and overwhelmed by the savages, they 
gave themselves up for lost. But fortunately Cortez 
recognized one of the medicine men by his rich 
dress, and in a last desperate charge, with Alvarado 
and a few other officers, struck down the person 
upon whom the superstitious Indians hang so much 
of the fate of war. The wizard dead, his awe-struck 
followers gave way ; and again the Spaniards came 
out from the very jaws of death. 

In the siege of Mexico, — the bloodiest and most 
romantic siege in all America, — Alvarado was prob- 
ably the foremost figure after Cortez. The great 
general was the head of that remarkable campaign, 
and a head indeed worth having. There is nothing 
in history quite like his achievement in having thir- 
teen brigantines built at Tlaxcala and transported 
on the shoulders of men over fifty miles inland 
across the mountains to be launched on the lake 
of Mexico and aid in the siege. The nearest to it 
was the great feat of Balboa in taking two brigan- 
tines across the Isthmus. The exploits of Hannibal 
the great Carthaginian at the siege of Tarentum, 
and of the Spanish "Great Captain" Gonzalo de 
Cordova at the same place, were not at all to be 
compared to either. 

In the seventy-three days' fighting of the siege, 
Alvarado was the right hand as Cortez was the head. 



ALVAR ADO'S LEAP. 177 

The dashing lieutenant had command of the force 
which pushed its assault along the same causeway 
by which they had retreated on the Noche Triste. 
In one of the battles Cortez's horse was killed under 
him, and the conqueror was being dragged off by 
the Indians when one of his pages dashed forward 
and saved him. In the final assault and desperate 
struggle in the city Cortez led half the Spanish 
force, and Alvarado the other half; and the latter 
it was who conducted that memorable storming of 
the great teocalli. 

After the conquest of Mexico, in which he had 
won such honors, Alvarado was sent by Cortez to 
the conquest of Guatemala, with a small force. He 
marched down through Oaxaca and Tehuantepec 
to Guatemala, meeting a resistance characteristically 
Indian. There were three principal tribes in Gua- 
temala, — the Quiche, Zutuhil, and Cacchiquel. The 
Quiche opposed him in the open field, and he de- 
feated them. Then they formally surrendered, made 
peace, and invited him to visit them as a friend in 
their pueblo of Utatlan. When the Spaniards were 
safely in the town and surrounded, the Indians set 
fire to the houses and fell fiercely upon their stifling 
guests. After a hard engagement Alvarado routed 
them, and put the ringleaders to death. The other 
two tribes submitted, and in about a year Alvarado 
and his Httle company had achieved the conquest of 
Guatemala. His services were rewarded by making 
him governor and adelantado of the province ; and 
he founded his city of Guatemala, which in his day 
12 



1 78 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

probably became something like what Mexico then 
was, — a town containing fifteen thousand to twenty 
thousand Indians and one thousand Spaniards. 

From this, his capital, Governor Alvarado was 
frequently absent. There were many expeditions 
to be made up and down the wild New World. His 
greatest journey was in 1534, when, building his 
own vessels as usual, he sailed to Ecuador and made 
the difficult march inland to Quito, only to find 
himself in Pizarro's territory. So he returned to 
Guatemala fruitless. 

During one of his absences occurred the frightful 
earthquake which destroyed the city of Guatemala, 
and dealt Alvarado a personal blow from which he 
never recovered. Above the city towered two great 
volcanoes, — the Volcan del Agua and the Volcan 
del Fuego. The volcano of water was extinct, and 
its crater was filled with a lake. The volcano of 
fire was — and is still — active. In that memorable 
earthquake the lava rim of the Volcan del Agua was 
rent asunder by the convulsion, and its avalanche 
of waters tumbled headlong upon the doomed city. 
Thousands of the people perished under falling 
walls and in the resistless flood ; and among the 
lost was Alvarado's wife, Dona Beatriz de la Cueva. 
Her death broke the brave soldier's spirit, for he 
loved her very dearly. 

In the troublous times which befell Mexico after 
Cortez had finished his conquest, and began to be 
spoiled by prosperity and to make a very unadmir- 
able exhibition of himself, Alvarado's support was 



ALVAR ADO'S LEAP. 179 

sought and won by the great and good viceroy, 
Antonio de Mendoza, — one of the foremost execu- 
tive minds of all time. This was no treachery on 
Alvarado's part toward his former commander ; for 
Cortez had turned traitor not only to the Crown, but 
also to his friends. The cause of Mendoza was the 
cause of good government and of loyalty. 

It had become necessary to tame the hostile 
Nayares Indians, who had caused the Spaniards 
great trouble in the province of Jalisco ; and in this 
campaign Alvarado joined Mendoza. The Indians 
retreated to the top of the huge and apparently 
impregnable cliff of the Mixton, and they must be 
dislodged at any cost. The storming of that rock 
ranks with the storming of Acoma as one of the 
most desperate and briUiant ever recorded. The 
viceroy commanded in person, but the real achieve- 
ment was by Alvarado and a fellow officer. In the 
scaling of the cliff Alvarado was hit on the head by 
a rock rolled down by the savages, and died from 
the wound, — but not until he saw his followers win 
that brilliant day. 

The man who, next to Alvarado, deserves the 
credit of the Mixton was Cristobal de Oiiate, a 
man of distinction for several reasons. He was a 
valued officer, a good executive, and one of the first 
millionnaires in North America. He was, too, the 
father of the colonizer of New Mexico, Juan de 
Ofiate. June 11, 1548, several years after the 
battle of the Mixton, the elder Ofiate discovered 
the richest silver mines on the continent, — the 



l8o THE SPANISH PIONEERS, 

mines of Zacatecas, in the barren and desolate 
plateau where now stands the Mexican city of that 
name. These huge veins of " ruby," " black," ar- 
senate, and virgin silver made the first milUonnaires 
in North America, as the conquest of Peru made 
the first on the southern continent. The mines of 
Zacatecas were not so vast as those developed at 
Potosi, in Bolivia, which produced between 1541 and 
1664 the inconceivable sum of ^641,250,000 in silver ; 
but the Zacatecas mines were also enormously pro- 
ductive. Their silver stream was the first realization 
of the dreams of vast wealth on the northern conti- 
nent, and made a startling commercial change in this 
part of the New World. Locally, the discovery re- 
duced the price of the staples of life about ninety 
per cent ! Mexico was never a great gold country, 
but for more than three centuries has remained one 
of the chief silver producers. It is so to-day, though 
its output is not nearly so large as that of the United 
States. 

Cristobal de Onate was, therefore, a very important 
man in the working out of destiny. His " bonanza " 
made Mexico a new country, commercially, and his 
millions were put to a better use than is always the 
case nowadays, for they had the honor of building 
two of the first towns in our own United States. 



THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE. i8l 



IX. 

THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE. 

WE all know of that strange yellow ramskin 
which hung dragon-guarded in the dark 
groves of Colchis ; and how Jason and his Argo- 
nauts won the prize after so many wanderings and 
besetments. But in our own New World we have 
had a far more dazzling golden fleece than that 
mythical pupil of old Cheiron ever chased, and one 
that no man ever captured, — though braver men 
than Jason tried it. Indeed, there were hundreds 
of more than Jasons, who fought harder and suffered 
tenfold deadlier fortunes and never clutched the 
prize after all. For the dragon which guarded the 
American Golden Fleece was no such lap-dog of a 
chimera as Jason's, to swallow a pretty potion and 
go to sleep. It was a monster bigger than all the 
land the Argonauts lived in and all the lands they 
roamed; a monster which not man nor mankind 
has yet done away with, — the mortal monster of 
the tropics. 

The myth of Jason is one of the prettiest in an- 
tiquity, and it is more than pretty. We are begin- 
ning to see what an important bearing a fairy tale 
may have on sober knowledge. The myth has 



1 82 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

always somewhere some foundation of truth ; and 
that hidden truth may be of enduring value. To 
study history, indeed, without paying any attention 
to the related myths, is to shut off a precious side 
light. Human progress, in almost every phase, has 
been influenced by this quaint but potent factor. 
Where do you fancy chemistry would be if the philo- 
sopher's stone and other myths had not lured the 
old alchemists to pry into mysteries where they 
found never what they sought, but truths of utmost 
value to mankind? Geography in particular has 
owed almost more of its growth into a science to 
myths than to scholarly invention ; and the gold 
myth, throughout the world, has been the prophet 
and inspiration of discovery, and a moulder of 
history. 

We have been rather too much in the habit of 
classing the Spaniards as the gold-hunters, with an 
intimation that gold-hunting is a sort of sin, and that 
they were monumentally prone to it. But it is not 
a Spanish copyright, — the trait is common to all 
mankind. The only difference was that the Span- 
iards found gold ; and that is offence enough to 
" historians " too narrow to consider " what would 
the English have done had they found gold in 
America at the outset." 

I believe it is not denied that when gold was dis- 
covered in the uttermost parts of his land the 
Saxon found legs to get to it, — and even adopted 
measures not altogether handsome in clutching it ; 
but nobody is so silly as to speak of " the days of 



THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE. 183 

'49 " as a disgrace to us. Some lamentable pages 
there were ; but when California suddenly tipped up 
the continent till the strength of the east ran down 
to her, she opened one of the bravest and most im- 
portant and most significant chapters in our national 
story. For gold is not a sin. It is a very necessary 
thing, and a very worthy one, as long as we remem- 
ber that it is a means and not an end, a tool and 
not an accomplishment, — which point of business 
common-sense we are quite as apt to forget in Wall 
Street as in the mines. 

We have largely to thank this universal and per- 
fectly proper fondness for gold for giving us America, 
— as, in fact, for civilizing most other countries. 

The scientific history of to-day has fully shown 
how foolishly false is the idea that the Spaniards 
sought merely gold ; how manfully they provided 
for the mind and the soul as well as the pocket. 
But gold was with them, as it would be even now 
with other men, the strong motive. The great 
difference was only that gold did not make them 
forget their religion. It was the golden finger that 
beckoned Columbus to America, Cortez to Mexico, 
Pizarro to Peru, — just as it led us to CaUfornia, 
which otherwise would not have been one of our 
States to-day. The gold actually found at first in 
the New World was disappointingly little ; up to 
the conquest of Mexico it aggregated only ^500,000. 
Cortez swelled the amount, and Pizarro jumped it 
up to a fabulous and dazzling figure. But, curiously 
enough, the gold that was found did not cut a more 



184 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

important figure in the exploration and civilization 
of the New World than that which was pursued in 
vain. The wonderful myth which stands for the 
American Golden Fleece had a more startling effect 
on geography and history than the real and incalcu- 
lable riches of Peru. 

Of this fascinating myth we have very little popu- 
lar knowledge, except that a corruption of its name 
is in everybody's mouth. We speak of a rich region 
as "an Eldorado," or "the Eldorado" oftener than 
by any other metaphor ; but it is a blunder quite 
unworthy of scholars. It is simply saying " an the," 
" the the." The word is Dorado ; and it does not 
mean " the golden," as we seem to fancy, but " the 
gilded man," being a contraction of the Spanish 
el hombre dorado. And the Dorado, or gilded 
man, has made a history of achievement beside 
which Jason and all his fellow demi-gods sink into 
insignificance. 

Like all such myths, this had a foundation in fact. 
The Colchian ramskin was a poetic fancy of the gold 
mines of the Caucasus ; but there really was a gilded 
man. The story of him and what he led to is a fairy 
tale that has the advantage of being true. It is an 
enormously complicated theme ; but, thanks to Ban- 
delier's final unravelling of it, the story can now be 
told intelligibly, — as it has not been popularly told 
heretofore. 

A number of years ago there was found in the 
lagoon of Siecha, in New Granada, a quaint little 
group of statuary ; it was of the rude and ancient 



THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE. 185 

Indian workmanship, and even more precious for its 
ethnologic interest than for its material, which was 
pure gold. This rare specimen — which is still to 
be seen in a museum in Berlin — is a golden raft, 
upon which are grouped ten golden figures of men. 
It represents a strange custom which was in prehis- 
toric times peculiar to the Indians of the village of 
Guatavita, on the highlands of New Granada. That 
custom was this : On a certain great day one of the 
chiefs of the village used to smear his naked body 
with a gum, and then powder himself from head to 
foot with pure gold-dust. He was the Gilded Man. 
Then he was taken out by his companions on a raft 
to the middle of the lake, which was near the village, 
and leaping from the raft the Gilded Man used to 
wash off his precious and wonderful covering and let 
it sink to the bottom of the lake. It was a sacrifice 
for the benefit of the village. This custom is his- 
torically established, but it had been broken up more 
than thirty years before the story was first heard of 
by Europeans, — namely, the Spaniards in Venezuela 
in 1527. It had not been voluntarily abandoned by 
the people of Guatavita. The warlike Muysca In- 
dians of Bogota had ended it by swooping down 
upon the village of Guatavitd and nearly extermi- 
nating its inhabitants. Still, the sacrifice had been a 
fact; and at that enormous distance and in those 
uncertain days the Spaniards heard of it as still a 
fact. The story of the Gilded Man, El Hombre 
Dorado^ shortened to El Dorado ^ was too startling 
not to make an impression. It became a household 



1 86 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

word, and thenceforward was a lure to all who ap- 
proached the northern coast of South America. 
We may wonder how such a tale (which had 
already become a myth in 1527, since the fact upon 
which it was founded had ceased) could hold its 
own for two hundred and fifty years without being 
fully exploded ; but our surprise will cease when we 
remember what a difficult and enormous wilderness 
South America was, and how much of it has unex- 
plored mysteries even to-day. 

The first attempts to reach the Gilded Man were 
from the coast of Venezuela. Charles I. of Spain, 
afterward Charles V., had pawned the coast of that 
Spanish possession to the wealthy Bavarian family of 
the Welsers, giving them the right to colonize and 
" discover " the interior. In 1529, Ambrosius Dal- 
finger and Bartholomew Seyler landed at Coro, Ven- 
ezuela, with four hundred men. The tale of the 
Gilded Man was already current among the Span- 
iards ; and, allured by it, Dalfinger marched inland 
to find it. He was a dreadful brute, and his expe- 
dition was nothing less than absolute piracy. He 
penetrated as far as the Magdalena River, in New 
Granada, scattering death and devastation wherever 
he went. He found some gold ; but his brutality 
toward the Indians was so great, and in such a strong 
contrast to what they had been accustomed to from 
the Spaniards, that the exasperated natives turned, 
and his march amounted to a running fight of more 
than a year's duration. The trouble was, the Welsers 
cared only to get treasure back for the money they 



THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE. 187 

had paid out, and had none of the real Spanish 
spirit of colonizing and christianizing. Dalfinger 
failed to find the Gilded Man, and died in 1530 from 
a wound received during his infamous expedition. 

His successor in command of the Welser inter- 
ests, Nicolas Federmann, was not much better as a 
man and no more successful as a pioneer. In 1530 
he marched inland to discover the Dorado, but his 
course was due south from Coro, so he never touched 
New Granada. After a fearful march through the 
tropical forests he had to return empty-handed in 

1531- 

Here already begins to enter, chronologically, one 
of the curious ramifications and variations of this 
prolific myth. At first a fact, in thirty years a fable, 
now in three years more the Gilded Man began to 
be a vagabond will-o'-the-wisp, flitting from one 
place to another, and gradually becoming tangled 
up in many other myths. The first variation came 
in the first attempt to discover the source of the 
Orinoco, — the mighty river which it was supposed 
could flow only from a great lake. In 1530, Anto- 
nio Sedefio sailed from Spain with an expedition to 
explore the Orinoco. He reached the Gulf of Paria 
and built a fort, intending thence to push his explo- 
ration. While he was doing this, Diego de Ordaz, 
a former companion of Cortez, had obtained in 
Spain a concession to colonize the district then 
called Maranon, — a vaguely defined area covering 
Venezuela, Guiana, and northern Brazil. He sailed 
from Spain in 1531, reached the Orinoco and sailed 



1 88 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

up that river to its falls. Then he had to return, 
after two years of vainly trying to overcome the 
obstacles before him. But on this expedition he 
heard that the Orinoco had its source in a great 
lake, and that the road to that lake led through a 
province called Meta, said to be fabulously rich in 
gold. On the authority of Bandelier, there is no 
doubt that this story of Meta was only an echo of 
the Dorado tale which had penetrated as far as the 
tribes of the lower Orinoco. 

Ordaz was followed in 1534 by Geronimo Dortal, 
who attempted to reach Meta, but failed even to 
get up the Orinoco. In 1535 he tried to penetrate 
overland from the northeast coast of Venezuela to 
Meta, but made a complete failure. These attempts 
from Venezuela, as Bandelier shows, finally localized 
the home of the Dorado by limiting it to the north- 
western part of the continent. It had been vainly 
sought elsewhere, and the inference was that it 
must be in the only place left, — the high plateau 
of New Granada. 

The conquest of the plateau of New Granada, 
after many unsuccessful attempts which cannot be 
detailed here, was finally made by Gonzalo Xime- 
nez de Quesada in 1536-38. That gallant soldier 
moved up the Magdalena River with a force of six 
hundred and twenty men on foot, and eighty-five 
horsemen. Of these only one hundred and eighty 
survived when he reached the plateau in the begin- 
ning of 1537. He found the Muysca Indians living 
in permanent villages, and in possession of gold and 



THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE, 189 

emeralds. They made a characteristic resistance ; 
but one tribe after another was overpowered, and 
Quesada became the conqueror of New Granada. 

The treasure which was divided by the con- 
querors amounted to 246,976 pesos de oro, — about 
$1,250,000 now, — and 1,815 emeralds, some of 
which were of enormous size and value. They had 
found the real home of the Gilded Man, — and had 
even come to Guatavita, whose people made a 
savage resistance, — but of course did not find him, 
since the custom had been already abandoned. 

Hardly had Quesada completed his great con- 
quest when he was surprised by the arrival of two 
other Spanish expeditions, which had been led to 
the same spot by the myth of the Dorado. One 
was led by Federmann, who had penetrated from 
the coast of Venezuela to Bogota on this his sec- 
ond expedition, — a frightful journey. At the 
same time, and without the knowledge of either, 
Sebastian de Belalcazar had marched up from Quito 
in search of the Gilded Man. The story of that 
gold-covered chief had penetrated the heart of 
Ecuador, and the Indian statements induced Belal- 
cazar to march to the spot. An arrangement was 
made between the three leaders by which Quesada 
was left sole master of the country he had con- 
quered, and Federmann and Belalcazar returned 
to their respective places. 

While Federmann was chasing the myth thus, a 
successor to him had already arrived at Coro. This 
was the intrepid German known as "George of 



190 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Speyer," whose real name, Bandelier has discovered, 
was George Hormuth. Reaching Coro in 1535, he 
heard not only of the Dorado, but even of tame 
sheep to the southwest, — that is, in the direction of 
Peru. Following these vague indications, he started 
southwest, but encountered such enormous difficul- 
ties in trying to reach the mountain pass, which the 
Indians told him led to the land of the Dorado, that 
he drifted into the vast and fearful tropical forests 
of the upper Orinoco. Here he heard of Meta, and, 
following that myth, penetrated to within one degree 
of the equator. For twenty-seven months he and 
his Spanish followers floundered in the tangled and 
swampy wastes between the Orinoco and the Ama- 
zon. They met some very numerous and warlike 
tribes, most conspicuous of which were the Uaupes.i 
They found no gold, but everywhere heard the fable 
of a great lake associated with gold. Of the one 
hundred and ninety men who started on this expe- 
dition only one hundred and thirty came back, and 
but fifty of these had strength left to bear arms. 
The whole of the indescribably awful trip lasted 
three years. The result of its horrors was to deflect 
the attention of explorers from the real home of the 
Dorado, and to lead them on a wild-goose chase 
after a related but rather geographic myth to the 
forests of the Amazon. In other words, it prepared 
for the exploration of northern Brazil. 

Shortly after George of Speyer, and entirely un- 
connected with him, Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror 

1 Pronounced Wow-pess . 



THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE. 191 

of Peru, had given an impulse to the exploration of 
the Amazon from the Pacific side of the continent. 
In 1538, distrusting Belalcazar, he sent his brother, 
Gonzalo Pizarro, to Quito to supersede his suspected 
lieutenant. The following year Gonzalo heard that 
the cinnamon-tree abounded in the forests on the 
eastern slope of the Andes, and that farther east 
dwelt powerful Indian tribes rich in gold. That is, 
while the original and genuine myth of the Dorado 
had reached to Quito from the north, the echo myth 
of Meta had got there from the east. Since Belalca- 
zar had gone to the real former home of the Dorado, 
and had failed to find that gentleman at home, it 
was supposed that the home must be somewhere 
else, — east, instead of north, from Quito. Gonzalo 
made his disastrous expedition into the eastern forests 
with two hundred and twenty men. In the two years 
of that ghastly journey all the horses perished, and so 
did all the Indian companions ; and the few Span- 
iards who survived to get back to Peru in 1541 were 
utterly broken down. The cinnamon-tree had been 
found, but not the Gilded Man. One of Gonzalo's 
lieutenants, Francisco de Orellana, had gone in 
advance on the upper Amazon with fifty men in a 
crazy boat. The two companies were unable to 
come together again, and Orellana finally drifted 
down the Amazon to its mouth with untold sufferings. 
Floating out into the Atlantic, they finally reached 
the island of Cubagua, Sept. 11, 1541. This expe- 
dition was the first to bring the world reliable infor- 
mation as to the size and nature of the greatest 



192 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

river on earth, and also to give that river the name 
it bears to-day. They encountered Indian tribes 
whose women fought side by side with the men, and 
for that reason named it Rio de las AmazoneSf — 
River of the Amazons. 

In 1543 Hernan Perez Quesada, a brother of the 
conqueror, penetrated the regions which George of 
Speyer had visited. He went in from Bogota, hav- 
ing heard the twisted myth of Meta, but only found 
misery, hunger, disease, and hostile savages in the six- 
teen awful months he floundered in the wilderness. 

Meanwhile Spain had become satisfied that the 
leasing of Venezuela to the German money-lenders 
was a failure. The Welser regime was doing nothing 
but harm. Yet a last effort was determined upon, 
and Philip von Hutten, a young and gallant German 
cavalier, left Coro in August, 1541, in chase of the 
golden myth, which by this time had flitted as far 
south as the Amazon. For eighteen months he wan- 
dered in a circle, and then, hearing of a powerful and 
gold-rich tribe called the Omaguas, he dashed on 
south across the equator with his force of forty men. 
He met the Omaguas, was defeated by them and 
wounded, and finally struggled back to Venezuela 
after suffering for more than three years in the most 
impassable forests and swamps of the tropics. Upon 
his return he was murdered ; and that was the last 
of the German domination in Venezuela. 

The fact that the Omaguas had been able to de- 
feat a Spanish company in open battle gave that 
tribe a great reputation. So strong in numbers and 



THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE. 193 

in bravery, it was naturally supposed that they must 
also have metallic wealth, though no evidence of 
that had been seen. 

Driven from its home, the myth of the Gilded 
Man had become a wandering ghost. Its original 
form had been lost sight of, and from the Dorado 
had gradually been changed to a golden tribe. It 
had become a confusion and combination of the 
Dorado and Meta, following the curious but char- 
acteristic course of myths. First, a remarkable fact ; 
then the story of a fact that had ceased to be ; then 
a far-off echo of that story, entirely robbed of the 
fundamental facts ; and at last a general tangle and 
jumble of fact, story, and echo into a new and 
almost unrecognizable myth. 

This vagabond and changeling myth figured prom- 
inently in 1550 in the province of Peru. In that 
year several hundred Indians from the middle course 
of the Amazon — that is, from about the heart of 
northern Brazil — took refuge in the eastern Spanish 
settlements in Peru. They had been driven from 
their homes by the hostility of neighbor tribes, and 
had reached Peru only after several years of toilsome 
wanderings. 

They gave exaggerated accounts of the wealth and 
importance of the Omaguas, and these tales were 
eagerly credited. Still, Peru was now in no condi- 
tion to undertake any new conquest, and it was not 
till ten years after the arrival of these Indian refu- 
gees that any step was taken in the matter. The 
first viceroy of Peru, the great and good Antonio de 



194 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Mendoza, who had been promoted from the vice- 
royalty of Mexico to this higher dignity, saw in this 
report the chance for a stroke of wisdom. He had 
cleared Mexico of a few hundred restless fellows who 
were a great menace to good government, by sending 
them off to chase the golden phantom of the Quivira 
— that remarkable expedition of Coronado which 
was so important to the history of the United States. 
He now found in his new province a similar but 
much worse danger ; and it was to rid Peru of its 
unruly and dangerous characters that Mendoza set on 
foot the famous expedition of Pedro de Ursua. It 
was the most numerous body of men ever assembled 
for such a purpose in Spanish America in the six- 
teenth century, but was composed of the worst and 
most desperate elements that the Spanish colonies 
ever contained. Ursua's force was concentrated on 
the banks of the upper Amazon; July i, 1560, the 
first brigantine floated down the great river. The 
main body followed in other brigantines on the 26th 
of September. 

The country was one vast tropical forest, abso- 
lutely deserted. It soon became apparent that 
their golden expectations could never be realized, 
and discontent began to play a bloody role. The 
throng of desperadoes by whose practical banish- 
ment the wise viceroy had purified Peru, could not 
be expected to get along well together. No longer 
scattered among good citizens who could restrain 
them, but in condensed rascality, they soon began 
to suggest the fable of the Kilkenny cats. Their 
voyage was an orgie entirely indescribable. 



THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE, 195 

Among these scoundrels was one of peculiar char- 
acter, — a physically deformed but very ambitious 
fellow, who had every reason not to wish to return 
to Peru. This was Lope de Aguirre. Seeing that 
the object of the expedition must absolutely fail, he 
began to form a nefarious plot. If they could not 
get gold in the way they had hoped, why not in 
another way? In short, he conceived the audacious 
plan of turning traitor to Spain and everything else, 
and founding a new empire. To achieve this he 
felt it necessary to remove the leaders of the expe- 
dition, who might have scruples against betraying 
their country. So, as the wretched brigantines 
floated down the great river, they became the stage 
of a series of atrocious tragedies. First, the com- 
mander Ursua was assassinated, and in his place 
was put a young but dissolute nobleman, Fernando 
de Guzman. He was at once elevated to the 
dignity of a prince, — the first open step toward 
high treason. 

Then Guzman was murdered, and also the in- 
famous Yiiez de Atienza, a woman who bore a 
shameful part in the affair; and the misshapen 
Aguirre became leader and " tyrant." His treason 
was now undisguised, and he commanded the ex- 
pedition thenceforth not as a Spanish officer, but 
as a rebel and a pirate. As he steered toward the 
Atlantic, it was with plans of appalling magnitude 
and daring. He intended to sail to the Gulf of 
Mexico, land on the Isthmus, seize Panama, and 
thence sail to Peru, where he would kill off all who 
opposed him, and establish an empire of his own ! 



196 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

But a curious accident brought his plans to 
nought. Instead of reaching the mouth of the 
Amazon, the flotilla drifted to the left, in that won- 
derfully tangled river, and got into the Rio Negro. 
The sluggish currents prevented their discovering 
their mistake, and they worked ahead into the 
Cassiquiare, and thence into the Orinoco. On the 
I St of July, 15 6 1 (a year to a day had been passed in 
navigating the labyrinth, and the days had been 
marked with murder right and left), the desper- 
adoes reached the Atlantic Ocean ; but through 
the mouth of the Orinoco, and not, as they had 
expected, through the Amazon. Seventeen days 
later they sighted the island of Margarita, where 
there was a Spanish post. By treachery they seized 
the island, and then proclaimed their independence 
of Spain. 

This step gave Aguirre money and some ammuni- 
tion, but he still lacked vessels for a voyage by sea. 
He tried to seize a large vessel which was conveying 
the provincial Monticinos, a Dominican missionary, 
to Venezuela ; but his treachery was frustrated, and 
the alarm was given on the mainland. Infuriated 
by his failure, the little monster butchered the royal 
)fficers of Margarita. His plan to reach Panama 
■vas balked ; but he succeeded at last in capturing 
a smaller vessel, by means of which he landed on 
the coast of Venezuela in August, 1561. His ca- 
reer on the mainland was one of crime and rapine. 
The people, taken by surprise, and unable to make 
immediate resistance to the outlaw, fled at his 



THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE. 197 

approach. The authorities sent as far as New 
Granada in their appeals for help ; and all northern 
South America was terrorized. 

Aguirre proceeded without opposition as far as 
Barquecimeto. He found that place deserted ; but 
very soon there arrived the maestro de campo, 
(Colonel) Diego de Paredes,, with a hastily collected 
loyal force. At the same time Quesada, the con- 
queror of New Granada, was hastening against the 
traitor with what force he could muster. Aguirre 
found himself blockaded in Barquecimeto, and his 
followers began to desert. Finally, left almost alone, 
Aguirre slew his daughter (who had shared all those 
awful wanderings) and surrendered himself. The 
Spanish commander did not wish to execute the 
arch-traitor; but Aguirre's own followers insisted 
upon his death, and secured it. 

There were many subsequent attempts to discover 
the Gilded Man ; but they were of little importance, 
except the one undertaken by Sir Walter Raleigh 
in 1595. He got only as far as the Salto Coroni, — 
that is, failed to achieve anything like as great a 
feat as even Ordaz, — but returned to England with 
glowing accounts of a great inland lake and rich 
nations. He had mixed up the legend of the 
Dorado with reports of the Incas of Peru, — which 
proves that the Spanish were not the only people 
to swallow fables. Indeed, the English and other 
explorers were fully as credulous and fully as anxious 
to get to the fabled gold. 



198 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

The myth of the great lake, the lake of Parime/ 
gradually absorbed the myth of the Gilded Man. 
The historic tradition became merged and lost in 
the geographic fable. Only in the eastern forests of 
Peru did the Dorado re-appear in the beginning of 
the last century, but as a distorted and groundless 
tale. But Lake Parime remained on the maps and 
in geographical descriptions. It is a curious co- 
incidence that where the golden tribes of Meta 
were once believed to exist, the gold fields of 
Guiana (now a bone of contention between Eng- 
land and Venezuela) have recently been discov- 
ered. It is certain that Meta was only a myth, but 
even the myth was useful. 

The fable of the lake of Parime — long believed 
in as a great lake with whole ranges of mountains of 
silver behind it — was fully exploded by Humboldt 
in the beginning of the present century. He showed 
that there was neither a great lake nor were there 
mountains of silver. The broad savannas of the 
Orinoco, when overflowed in the rainy season, had 
been taken for a lake, and the silver background 
was simply the shimmer of the sunlight on peaks 
of micaceous rock. 

With Humboldt finally perished the most remark- 
able fairy tale in history. No other myth or legend 
in either North or South America ever exercised 
such a powerful influence on the course of geograph- 
ical discovery ; none ever called out such surpassing 
human endeavor, and none so well illustrated the 
1 Pronounced Pah-^^^-may. 



THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE. 199 

matchless tenacity of purpose and the self-sacrifice 
inherent in the Spanish character. It is a new lesson 
to most of us, but a true and proved one, that this 
southern nation, more impulsive and impetuous than 
those of the north, was also more patient and more 
enduring. 

The myth died, but it had not existed in vain. 
Before it had been disproved, it had brought about 
the exploration of the Amazon, the Orinoco, all 
Brazil north of the Amazon, all Venezuela, all New 
Granada, and eastern Ecuador. If we look at the 
map a moment, we shall see what this means, — that 
the Gilded Man gave to the world the geography of 
all South America above the equator. 



III. 

THE GREATEST CONQUEST. 



PIZARRO AND PERU. 



I. 

THE SWINEHERD OF TRUXILLO. 

SOMEWHERE between the years 1471 and 1478, 
(we are not sure of the exact date), an unfortu- 
nate boy was born in the city of Truxillo/ province 
of Estremadura, Spain. He was an illegitimate son 
of Colonel Gonzalo Pizarro,^ who had won distinc- 
tion in the wars in Italy and Navarre. But his par- 
entage was no help to him. The disgraced baby 
never had a home, — it is even said that he was left 
as a foundling at the door of a church. He grew up 
to young manhood in ignorance and abject poverty, 
without schools or care or helping hands, thrown 
entirely upon his own resources to keep from starv- 
ing. Only the most menial occupations were open 
to him ; but he seems to have done his best with 
them. How the neighbor-boys would have laughed 
and hooted if one had said to them : " That dirty, 
ragged youngster who drives his pigs through the 
oak-groves of Estremadura will one day be the 
greatest man in a new world which no one has yet 
seen, and will be a more famous soldier than our 
Great Captain,^ and will divide more gold than the 

1 Pronounced 'Yxoo-heel-^o. 2 Pronounced Pee-ji-^-roh. 
^ The famous European campaigner, De Cordova. 



204 ^^^ SPANISH PIONEERS. 

king has ! " And we could not have blamed them 
for their sneers. The wisest man in Europe then 
would have believed as little as they such a wild 
prophecy; for truly it was the most improbable 
thing in the world. 

But the boy who could herd swine faithfully when 
there was no better work to do, could turn his hand 
to greater things when greater offered, and do them 
as well. Luckily the New World came just in time 
for him. If it had not been for Columbus, he might 
have lived and died a swineherd, and history would 
have lost one of its most gallant figures, as well as 
many more of those to whom the adventurous Geno- 
ese opened the door of fame. To thousands of 
men as undivined by themselves as by others, there 
was then nothing to see in life but abject obscurity in 
crowded, ignorant, poverty-stricken Europe. When 
Spain suddenly found the new land beyond the seas, 
it caused such a wakening of mankind as was 
never before nor ever has been since. There was, 
almost literally, a new world ; and it made almost a 
new people. Not merely the brilliant and the great 
profited by this wonderful change ; there was none 
so poor and ignorant that he might not now spring 
up to the full stature of the man that was in him. 
It was, indeed, the greatest beginning of human 
liberty, the first opening of the door of equality, the 
first seed of free nations like our own. The Old 
World was the field of the rich and favored ; but 
America was already what it is so proud to be to-day, 
— the poor man's chance. And it is a very striking 



THE SWINEHERD OP TRUXILLO. 205 

fact that nearly all who made great names in Amer- 
ica were not of those who came great, but of the 
obscure men who won here the admiration of a 
world which had never heard of them before. 01 
all these and of all others, Pizarro was the greatest 
pioneer. The rise of Napoleon himself was not a 
more startling triumph of will and genius over every 
obstacle, nor as creditable morally. 

We do not know the year in which Francisco 
Pizarro, the swineherd of Truxillo, reached America ; 
but his first importance here began in 15 10. In 
that year he was already in the island of Espahola, 
and accompanied Ojeda ^ on the disastrous expedi- 
tion to Uraba on the mainland. Here he showed 
himself so brave and prudent that Ojeda left him in 
charge of the ill-fated colony of San Sebastian, 
while he himself should return to Espaiiola for help. 
This first honorable responsibility which fell to 
Pizarro was full of danger and suffering ; but he 
was equal to the emergency, and in him began to 
grow that rare and patient heroism which was later 
to bear him up through the most dreadful years that 
ever conqueror had. For two months he waited in 
that deadly spot, until so many had died that the sur- 
vivors could at last crowd into their one boat. 

Then Pizarro joined Balboa, and shared that 
frightful march across the Isthmus and that brilliant 
honor of the discovery of the Pacific. When Bal- 
boa's gallant career came to a sudden and bloody 
ending, Pizarro was thrown upon the hands of Pedro 
1 Pronounced 0-ja>dah. 



2o6 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Arias Davila, who sent him on several minor expedi- 
tions. In 15 15 he crossed the Isthmus again, and 
probably heard vaguely of Peru. But he had nei- 
ther money nor influence to launch out for himself. 
He accompanied Governor Davila when that offi- 
cial moved to Panama, and won respect in several 
small expeditions. But at fifty years of age he was 
still a poor man and an unknown one, — an humble 
ranchero near Panama. On that pestilent and wild 
Isthmus there had been very little chance to make 
up for the disadvantages of his youth. He had not 
learned to read or write, — indeed, he never did 
learn. But it is evident that he had learned some 
more important lessons, and had developed a man- 
hood equal to any call the future might make upon it. 
In 1522, Pascual de Andag6ya made a short 
voyage from Panama down the Pacific coast, but 
got no farther than Balboa had gone years before. 
His failure, however, called new attention to the un- 
known countries to the south ; and Pizarro burned 
to explore them. The mind of the man who had 
been a swineherd was the only one that grasped 
the importance of what awaited discovery, — his 
courage, the only courage ready to face the obsta- 
cles that lay between. At last, he found two men 
ready to listen to his plans and to help him. These 
were Diego de Almagro ^ and Hernando de Luque.'* 
Almagro was a soldier of fortune, a foundling like 
Pizarro, but better educated and somewhat older. 

1 Pronounced Vit^-ay-go day K[-tnah-gxo, 

2 Pronounced Er-wa«-do day Zw-kay. 



THE SWINEHERD OF TRUXILLO. 207 

He was a brave man physically ; but he lacked the 
high moral courage as well as the moral power of 
Pizarro. He was in every way a lower grade of man, 
— more what would have been expected from their 
common birth than was that phenomenal character 
which was as much at home in courts and conquest 
as it had been in herding beasts. Not only could 
Pizarro accommodate himself to any range of for- 
tune, but he was as unspoiled by power as by 
poverty. He was a man of principle ; a man of 
his word ; inflexible, heroic, yet prudent and hu- 
mane, generous and just, and forever loyal, — in all 
of which qualities Almagro fell far below him. 

De Luque was a priest, vicar at Panama. He 
was a wise and good man, to whom the two soldiers 
were greatly indebted. They had nothing but strong 
arms and big courage for the expedition ; and he 
had to furnish the means. This he did with money 
he secured from the licentiate Espinosa, a lawyer. 
The consent of the governor was necessary, as in all 
Spanish provinces ; and though Governor Davila did 
not seem to approve of the expedition, his permis- 
sion was secured by promising him a share of the 
profits, while he was not called upon for any of 
the expenses. Pizarro was given command, and 
sailed in November, 1524, with one hundred men. 
Almagro was to follow as soon as possible, hoping 
to recruit more men in the little colony. 

After coasting a short distance to the south, Pi- 
zarro effected a landing. It was an inhospitable 
spot. The explorers found themselves in a vast, 



2o8 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

tropical swamp, where progress was made almost im 
possible by the morasses and by the dense growth. 
The miasma of the marsh brooded everywhere, 
an intangible but merciless foe. Clouds of veno- 
mous insects hung upon them. To think of flies 
as a danger to life is strange to those who know 
only the temperate zones ; but in some parts of the 
tropics the insects are more dreadful than wolves. 
From the swamps the exhausted Spaniards strug- 
gled through to a range of hills, whose sharp rocks 
(lava, very likely) cut their feet to the bone. And 
there was nothing to cheer them ; all was the same 
hopeless wilderness. They toiled back to their rude 
brigantine, fainting under the tropic heat, and re-em- 
barked. Taking on wood and water, they pursued 
their course south. Then came savage storms, 
which lasted ten days. Hurled about on the waves, 
their crazy little vessel barely missed falling asun- 
der. Water ran short ; and as for food, they had to 
live on two ears of corn apiece daily. As soon as 
the weather would permit they put to a landing, but 
found themselves again in a trackless and impenetra- 
ble forest. These strange, vast forests of the tropics 
( forests as big as the whole of Europe) are Nature's 
most forbidding side ; the pathless sea and the des- 
ert plains are not so lonely or so deadly. Gigantic 
trees, sometimes much more than a hundred feet in 
circumference, grow thick and tall, their bases 
buried in eternal gloom, their giant columns inter- 
woven with mighty vines, so that it is no longer a 
forest but a wall. Every step must be won by the 



THE SWINEHERD OF TRUXILLO. 2O9 

axe. Huge and hideous snakes and great saurians 
are there ; and in the hot, damp air lurks a foe 
deadlier than python or alligator or viper, — the 
tropic pestilence. 

The men were no weaklings, but in this dreadful 
wilderness they soon lost hope. They began to 
curse Pizarro for leading them only to a miserable 
death, and clamored to sail back to Panama. But 
this only served to show the difference between men 
who were only brave physically and those of moral 
courage like Pizarro's. He had no thought of giving 
up ; yet as his men were ripe for mutiny, something 
must be done ; and he did a very bright thing, — 
one of the small first flashes of that genius which 
danger and extremity finally developed so conspicu- 
ously. He cheered his followers even while he was 
circumventing their mutiny. Montenegro, one of 
the officers, was sent back with the brigantine and 
half the little army to the Isle of Pearls for supplies. 
That kept the expedition from being given up. 
Pizarro and his fifty men could not return to Pan- 
ama, for they had no boat ; and Montenegro and 
his companions could not well fail to come back 
with succor. But it was a bitter waiting for reUef. 
For six weeks the starving Spaniards floundered in 
the swamps, from which they could find no exit. 
There was no food except the shellfish they picked 
up and a few berries, some of which proved poison- 
ous and caused tortures to those who ate them. 
Pizarro shared the hardships of his men with unself- 
ish gentleness, dividing with the poorest soldier, and 
14 



210 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

toiling like the rest, always with brave words to cheer 
them up. More than twenty men — nearly half the 
little force — died under their hardships ; and all 
the survivors lost hope save the stout-hearted com- 
mander. When they were almost at the last gasp, a 
far light gleaming through the forest aroused them ; 
and forcing their way in that direction they came 
at last to open ground, where was an Indian village 
whose corn and cocoanuts saved the emaciated 
Spaniards. These Indians had a few rude gold orna- 
ments, and told of a rich country to the south. 

At last Montenegro got back with the vessel and 
supplies to Puerto de la Hambre, or the Port of 
Hunger, as the Spaniards named it. He too had 
suffered greatly from hunger, having been delayed 
by storms. The reunited force sailed on southward, 
and presently came to a more open coast. Here 
was another Indian village. Its people had fled, 
but the explorers found food and some gold trinkets. 
They were horrified, however, at discovering that 
they were among cannibals, for before the fireplaces 
human legs and arms were roasting. They put to 
sea in the teeth of a storm sooner than remain in 
so repulsive a spot. At the headland, which they 
named Punta Quemada, — the Burnt Cape, — they 
had to land again, their poor bark being so strained 
that it was in great danger of going to the bottom. 
Montenegro was sent inland with a small force to 
explore, while Pizarro camped at a deserted Indian 
rancheria. The lieutenant had penetrated but a 
few miles when he was ambushed by the savages, 



THE SWINEHERD OF TRUXILLO. 21 1 

and three Spaniards were slain. Montenegro's men 
had not even muskets ; but with sword and cross- 
bow they fought hard, and at last drove off their 
dusky foes. The Indians, failing there, made a 
rapid march back to their village, and knowing the 
paths got there ahead of Montenegro and made a 
sudden attack. Pizarro led his little company out 
to meet them, and a fierce but unequal fight began. 
The Spaniards were at great odds, and their case 
was desperate. In the first volley of the enemy, 
Pizarro received seve7i wounds^ — a fact which in itself 
is enough to show you what slight advantage their 
armor gave the Spaniards over the Indians, while it 
was a fearful burden in the tropic heats and amid 
such agile foes. The Spaniards had to give way; 
and as they retreated, Pizarro slipped and fell. The 
Indians, readily recognizing that he was the chief, 
had directed their special efforts to slay him ; and 
now several sprang upon the fallen and bleeding 
warrior. But Pizarro struggled up and struck down 
two of them with supreme strength, and fought off 
the rest till his men could run to his aid. Then 
Montenegro came up and fell upon the savages from 
behind, and soon the Spaniards were masters of the 
field. But it had been dearly bought, and their 
leader saw plainly that he could not succeed in 
that savage land with such a weak force. His next 
step must be to get reinforcements. 

He accordingly sailed back to Chicamd, and re- 
maining there with most of his men, — again care- 
ful not to give them a chance to desert, — sent 



212 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Nicolas de Ribera, with the gold so far collected and 
a full account of their doings, to Governor Davila 
at Panama. 

Meanwhile Almagro, after long delays, had sailed 
with sixty men in the second vessel from Panama 
to follow Pizarro. He found the " track " by trees 
Pizarro had marked at various points, according to 
their agreement. At Punta Quemada he landed, and 
the Indians gave him a hostile reception. Almagro's 
blood was hot, and he charged upon them bravely. 
In the action, an Indian javelin wounded him so 
severely in the head that after a few days of intense 
suffering he lost one of his eyes. But despite this 
great misfortune he kept on his voyage. It was the 
one admirable side of the man, — his great brute 
courage. He could face danger and pain bravely ; 
but in a very few days he proved that the higher 
courage was lacking. At the river San Juan (St. 
John) the loneliness and uncertainty were too much 
for Almagro, and he turned back toward Panama. 
Fortunately, he learned that his captain was at Chi- 
cama, and there joined him. Pizarro had no thought 
of abandoning the enterprise, and he so impressed 
Almagro — who only needed to be led to be ready 
for any daring — that the two solemnly vowed to 
each other to see the voyage to the end or die like 
men in trying. Pizarro sent him on to Panama to 
work for help, and himself stayed to cheer his men 
in pestilent Chicama. 

Governor Davila, at best an unenterprising and 
unadmirable man, was just now in a particularly bad 



THE SWINEHERD OP TRUXILLO. 213 

humor to be asked for help. One of his subordi- 
nates in Nicaragua needed punishment, he thought, 
and his own force was small for the purpose. He 
bitterly regretted having allowed Pizarro to go off 
with a hundred men who would be so useful now, 
and refused either to help the expedition or to per- 
mit it to go on. De Luque, whose calling and char- 
acter made him influential in the little colony, finally 
persuaded the mean- hearted governor not to inter- 
fere with the expedition^ Even here Davila showed 
his nature. As the price of his official consent, — 
without which the voyage could not go on, — he 
extorted a payment of a thousand pesos de oro, for 
which he also relinquished all his claims to the profits 
of the expedition, which he felt sure would amount 
to little or nothing. A peso de oro, or " dollar of 
gold," had about the intrinsic value of our dollar, but 
was then really worth far more. In those days of 
the world gold was far scarcer than now, and there- 
fore had much more purchasing power. The same 
weight of gold would buy about five times as much 
then as it will now; so what was called a dollar, 
and weighed a dollar, was really worth about five 
dollars. The "hush-money" extorted by Davila 
was therefore some ^5,000. 

Fortunately, about this time Davila was super- 
seded by a new governor of Panama, Don Pedro de 
los Rios, who opposed no further obstacles to the 
great plan. A new contract was entered into be- 
tween Pizarro, Almagro, and Luque, dated March 10, 
1526. The good vicar had advanced gold bars to 



214 ^^^ SPANISH PIONEERS. 

the amount of one hundred thousand dollars for the 
expedition ; and was to receive one third of all the 
profits. But in reality most of this large sum had 
come from the licentiate Espinosa; and a private 
contract insured that Luque's share should be turned 
over to him. Two new vessels, larger and better 
than the worn-out brigantine which had been built 
by Balboa, were purchased and filled with provisions. 
The little army was swelled by recruits to one hun- 
dred and sixty men, and even a few horses were 
secured ; and the second expedition was ready. 



THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT GIVE UP. 2t$ 

II. 

THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT GIVE UP. 

\ T 7ITH so inadequate a force, yet much 
V V stronger than before, Pizarro and Almagro 
sailed again on their dangerous mission. The pilot 
was Bartolome Ruiz, a brave and loyal Andalusian 
and a good sailor. The weather was better now, 
and the adventurers pushed on hopefully. After a 
few days' sail they reached the Rio San Juan, which 
was as far as any European had ever sailed down 
that coast : it will be remembered that this was where 
Almagro had got discouraged and turned back. Here 
were more Indian settlements, and a little gold ; but 
here too the vastness and savagery of the wilderness 
became more apparent. It is hard for us to con- 
ceive at all, in these easy days, how iosf these 
explorers were. Then there was not a white man 
in all the world who knew what lay beyond them ; 
and the knowledge of something somewhere ahead 
is the most necessary prop to courage. We can 
understand their situation only by supposing a band 
of schoolboys — brave boys but unlearned — carried 
blindfold a thousand miles, and set down in a track- 
less wilderness they had never heard of. 

Pizarro halted here with part of his men, and 
sent Almagro back to Panama with one vessel for 



2l6 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

recruits, and Pilot Ruiz south with the other to 
explore the coast. Ruiz coasted southward as far as 
Punta de Pasado, and was the first white man who 
ever crossed the equator on the Pacific, — no small 
honor. He found a rather more promising country, 
and encountered a large raft with cotton sails, on 
which were several Indians. They had mirrors 
(probably of volcanic glass, as was common to the 
southern aborigines) set in silver, and ornaments of 
silver and gold, besides remarkable cloths, on which 
were woven figures of beasts, birds, and fishes. The 
cruise lasted several weeks; and Ruiz got back to 
the San Juan barely in time. Pizarro and his men 
had suffered awful hardships. They had made a 
gallant effort to get inland, but could not escape the 
dreadful tropical forest, " whose trees grew to the 
sky." The dense growth was not so lonely as their 
earlier forests. There were troops of chattering 
monkeys and brilliant parrots; around the huge 
trees coiled lazy boas, and alligators dozed by the 
sluggish lagoons. Many of the Spaniards perished 
by these grim, strange foes ; some were crushed to 
pulp in the mighty coils of the snakes, and some 
were crunched between the teeth of the scaly sau- 
rians. Many more fell victims to lurking savages; 
in a single swoop fourteen of the dwindling band 
were slain by Indians, who surrounded their stranded 
canoe. Food gave out too, and the survivors were 
starving when Ruiz got back with a scant relief but 
cheering news. Very soon too Almagro arrived, 
with supplies and a reinforcement of eighty men. 



THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT GIVE UP. 217 

The whole expedition set sail again for the south. 
But at once there rose persistent storms. After 
great suffering the explorers got back to the Isle of 
Gallo, where they stayed two weeks to repair their 
disabled vessels and as badly shattered bodies. 
Then they sailed on again down the unknown seas. 
The country was gradually improving. The malarial 
tropic forests no longer extended into the very sea. 
Amid the groves of ebony and mahogany were 
occasional clearings, with rudely cultivated fields, 
and also Indian settlements of considerable size. In 
this region were gold-washings and emerald-mines, 
and the natives had some valuable ornaments. The 
Spaniards landed, but were set upon by a vastly 
superior number of savages, and escaped destruction 
only in a very curious way. In the uneven battle 
the Spaniards were sorely pressed, when one of their 
number fell from his horse ; and this trivial incident 
put the swarming savages to flight. Some historians 
have ridiculed the idea that such a trifle could have 
had such an effect; but that is merely because of 
ignorance of the facts. You must remember that 
these Indians had never before seen a horse. The 
Spanish rider and his steed they took for one huge 
animal, strange and fearful enough at best, — a 
parallel to the old Greek myth of the Centaurs, and 
a token of the manner in which that myth began. 
But when this great unknown beast divided itself 
into two parts, which were able to act independently 
of each other, it was too much for the superstitious 
Indians, and they fled in terror. The Spaniards 



2l8 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

escaped to their vessels, and gave thanks for their 
strange deliverance. 

But this narrow escape had shown more clearly 
how inadequate their handful of men was to cope 
with the wild hordes. They must again have rein- 
forcements; and back they sailed to the Isle of 
Gallo, where Pizarro was to wait while Almagro 
went to Panama for help. You see Pizarro always 
took the heaviest and hardest burden for himself, 
and gave the easiest to his associate. It was always 
Almagro who was sent back to the comforts of civ- 
ilization, while his lion-hearted leader bore the 
waiting and danger and suffering. The greatest 
obstacle all along now was in the soldiers them- 
selves, — and I say this with a full realization of 
the deadly perils and enormous hardships. But 
perils and hardships without are to be borne more 
easily than treachery and discontent within. At 
every step Pizarro had to carry his men, — morally. 
They were constantly discouraged (for which they 
surely had enough reason) ; and when discouraged 
they were ready for any desperate act, except going 
ahead. So Pizarro had constantly to be will and 
courage not only for himself, who suffered as cruelly 
as the meanest, but for all. It was like the stout 
soul we sometimes see holding up a half-dead body, 
— a body that would long ago have broken loose 
from a less intrepid spirit. 

The men were now mutinous again ; and despite 
Pizarro' s gallant example and efforts, they came 
very near wrecking the whole enterprise. They 



THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT GIVE UP. 



219 



sent by Almagro to the governor's wife a ball of 
cotton as a sample of the products of the country ; 
but in this apparently harmless present the cowards 
had hidden a letter, in which they declared that 
Pizarro was leading them only to death, and warned 
others not to follow. A doggerel verse at the end 
set forth that Pizarro was a butcher waiting for more 
meat, and that Almagro went to Panama to gather 
sheep to be slaughtered. 

The letter reached Governor de los Rios, and 
made him very indignant. He sent the Cordovan 
Tafur with two vessels to the Isle of Gallo to bring 
back every Spaniard there, and thus stop an expedi- 
tion the importance of which his mind could not 
grasp. Pizarro and his men were suffering terribly, 
always drenched by the storms, and nearly starving. 
When Tafur arrived, all but Pizarro hailed him as 
a deliverer, and wanted to go home at once. But 
the captain was not daunted. With his dagger he 
drew a line upon the sands, and looking his men in 
the face, said : " Comrades and friends, on that side 
are death, hardship, starvation, nakedness, storms ; 
on this side is comfort. From this side you go to 
Panama to be poor; from that side to Peru to be 
rich. Choose, each who is a brave Castilian, that 
which he thinks best." 

As he spoke he stepped across the line to the 
south. Ruiz, the brave Andalusian pilot, stepped 
after him ; and so did Pedro de Candia, the Greek, 
and one after another eleven more heroes, whose 
names deserve to be remembered by all who love 



220 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

loyalty and courage. They were Crist6val de Peralta, 
Domingo de Soria Luce, Nicolas de Ribera, Fran- 
cisco de Cuellar, Alonso de Molina, Pedro Alcon, 
Garcia de Jerez, Anton de Carrion, i^lonso Briceno, 
Martin de Paz, and Juan de la Torre. 

The narrow Tafur could see in this heroism only 
disobedience to the governor, and would not leave 
them one of his vessels. It was with difficulty that 
he was prevailed upon to give them a few provisions, 
even to keep them from immediate starvation ; and 
with his cowardly passengers he sailed back to Pan- 
ama, leaving the fourteen alone upon their little 
island in the unknown Pacific. 

Did you ever know of a more remarkable hero- 
ism? Alone, imprisoned by the great sea, with 
very little food, no boat, no clothing, almost no 
weapons, here were fourteen men still bent on con- 
quering a savage country as big as Europe ! Even 
the prejudiced Prescott admits that in all the annals 
of chivalry there is nothing to surpass this. 

The Isle of Gallo became uninhabitable, and 
Pizarro and his men made a frail raft and sailed 
north seventy-five miles to the Isle of Gorgona. 
This was higher land, and had some timber, and the 
explorers made rude huts for shelter from the storms. 
Their sufferings were great from hunger, exposure, 
and venomous creatures which tortured them relent- 
lessly. Pizarro kept up daily religious services, and 
every day they thanked God for their preservation, 
and prayed for his continued protection. Pizarro 
was always a devout man, and never thought of act- 



THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT GIVE UP. 221 

ing without invoking divine help, nor of neglecting 
thanks for his successes. It was so to the last, and 
even with his last gasp his dying fingers traced the 
cross he revered. 

For seven indescribable months the fourteen de- 
serted men waited and suffered on their lonely reef. 
Tafur had reached Panama safely, and reported their 
refusal to return. Governor de los Rios grew angrier 
yet, and refused to help the obstinate castaways. But 
De Luque, reminding him that his orders from the 
Crown commanded assistance to Pizarro, at last in- 
duced the niggard governor to allow a vessel to be 
sent with barely enough sailors to man it, and a small 
stock of provisions. But with it went strict orders 
to Pizarro to return, and report at the end of six 
months, no matter what happened. The rescuers 
found the brave fourteen on the Isle of Gorgona ; 
and Pizarro was at last enabled to resume his voyage, 
with a few sailors and an army of eleven. Two of 
the fourteen were so sick that they had to be left on 
the island in the care of friendly Indians, and with 
heavy hearts their comrades bade them farewell. 

Pizarro sailed on south. Soon they passed the 
farthest point a European had ever reached, — Punta 
de Pasado, which was the limit of Ruiz's explorations, 
— and were again in unknown seas. After twenty 
days' sail they entered the Gulf of Guayaquil, in 
Ecuador, and anchored in the Bay of Tumbez. 
Before them they saw a large Indian town with per- 
manent houses. The blue bay was dotted with 
Indian sail- rafts ; and far in the background loomed 



2 22 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

the giant peaks of the Andes. We may imagine how 
the Spaniards were impressed by their first sight of 
mountains that rose more than twenty thousand feet 
above them. 

The Indians came out on their balsas (rafts) to 
look at these marvellous strangers, and being treated 
with the utmost kindness and consideration, soon lost 
their fears. The Spaniards were given presents of 
chickens, swine, and trinkets, and had brought to 
them bananas, corn, sweet potatoes, pineapples, co- 
coanuts, game, and fish. You may be sure these 
dainties were more than welcome to the gaunt ex- 
plorers after so many starving months. The Indians 
also brought aboard several llamas, — the character- 
istic and most valuable quadruped of South America. 
The fascinating but misled historian who has done 
more than any other one man in the United States to 
spread an interesting but absolutely false idea of Peru, 
calls the llama the Peruvian sheep ; but it is no more 
a sheep than a giraffe is. The llama is the South 
American camel (a true camel, though a small one), 
the beast of burden whose slow, sure feet and patient 
back have made it possible for man to subdue a 
country so mountainous in parts as to make horses 
useless. Besides being a carrier it is a producer of 
clothing ; it supplies the camel's hair which is woven 
into the woollen garments of the people. There 
were three other kinds of camel, — the vicuna, the 
guanaco, and the alpaca, — all small, and all vari- 
ously prized for their hair, which still surpasses the 
wool of the best sheep for making fine fabrics. The 



THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT GIVE UP. 



223 




Peruvians domesticated the llama in large flocks, 
and it was their most important helper. They were 
the only aborigines in the two Americas who had a 
beast of burden before the Europeans came, except 
the Apaches of the Plains and the Eskimos, both of 
whom had the dog and the sledge. 

At Tumbez, Alonso de Molina was sent ashore to 
look at the town. He came back with such gorgeous 
reports of gilded temples and great forts that Pizarro 
distrusted him, and sent Pedro de Candia. This 
Greek, a na- 
tive of the 
Isle of Can- 
dia, was a 
man of im- 

Autograph of Pedro de Candia. 

portance m 

the Httle Spanish force. The Greeks everywhere 
were then regarded as a people adept in the still 
mysterious weapons ; and all Europe had a respect 
for those who had invented that wonderful agent 
"Greek fire," which would burn under water, and 
which no man now- a- days knows how to make. 
The Greeks were generally known as "fire- workers," 
and were in great demand as masters of artillery. 

De Candia went ashore with his armor and arque- 
buse, both of which astounded the natives ; and 
when he set up a plank and shivered it with a ball, 
they were overwhelmed at the strange noise and its 
result. Candia brought back as glowing reports as 
Molina had done ; and the tattered Spaniards began 
to feel that at last their golden dreams were coming 



224 ^^^ SPANISH PIONEERS. 

true, and took heart again. Pizarro gently declined 
the gifts of gold and silver and pearls which the awe- 
struck natives offered, and turned his face again to 
the south, sailing as far as about the ninth degree 
of south latitude. Then, feeling that he had seen 
enough to warrant going back for reinforcements, 
he stood about for Panama. Alonso de Molina and 
one companion were left in Tumbez at their own re- 
quest, being much in love with the country. Pizarro 
took back in their places two Indian youth, to learn 
the Spanish language. One of them, who was given 
the name of Felipillo (little Philip) afterward cut 
an important and discreditable figure. The voyagers 
stopped at the Isle of Gorgona for their two coun- 
trymen who had been left there sick. One was dead, 
but the other gladly rejoined his compassionate com- 
rades. And so, with his dozen men, Pizarro came 
back to Panama after an absence of eighteen months, 
into which had been crowded the sufferings and 
horrors of a lifetime. 



GAINING GROUND. 22$ 



III. 

GAINING GROUND. 

GOVERNOR DE LOS RIOS was not impressed 
by the heroism of the little party, and refused 
them aid. The case seemed hopeless; but the 
leader was not to be crushed. He decided to go 
to Spain in person, and appeal to his king. It was 
one of his most remarkable undertakings, it seems 
to me. For this man, whose boyhood had been 
passed with swine, and who in manhood had been 
herding rude men far more dangerous, who was 
ignorant of books and unversed in courts, to present 
himself confidently yet modestly at the dazzling and 
punctilious court of Spain, showed another side of 
his high courage. It was very much as if a London 
chimney-sweep were to go to-morrow to ask audi- 
ence and favors of Queen Victoria. 

But Pizarro was equal to this, as to all the other 
crises of his life, and acquitted himself as gallantly. 
He was still tattered and penniless, but De Luque 
collected for him fifteen hundred ducats ; and in the 
spring of 1528 Pizarro sailed for Spain. He took 
with him Pedro de Candia and some Peruvians, with 
some llamas, some beautifully-woven Indian cloths, 
and a few trinkets and vessels of gold and silver, to 
15 



2 26 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

corroborate his story. He reached Seville in the 
summer, and was at once thrown into jail by Enciso 
under the cruel old law, long prevalent in all civihzed 
countries, allowing imprisonment for debt. His 
story soon got abroad, and he was released by order 
of the Crown and summoned to court. Standing 
before the brilliant Charles V., the unlettered soldier 
told his story so modestly, so manfully, so clearly, 
that Charles shed tears at the recital of such 
awful sufferings, and warmed to such heroic stead- 
fastness. 

The king was just about to embark for Italy on an 
important mission ; but his heart was won, and he 
left Pizarro to the Council of the Indies with recom- 
mendation to help the enterprise. That wise but 
ponderous body moved slowly, as men learned only 
in books and theories are apt to move ; and delay 
was dangerous. At last the queen took up the 
matter, and on the 26th of July, 1529, signed with 
her own royal hand the precious document which 
made possible one of the greatest conquests, and 
one of the most gallant, in human history. America 
owes a great deal to the brave queens of Spain as 
well as to its kings. We remember what Isabella 
had done for the discovery of the New World ; 
and now Charles's consort had as creditable a hand 
in its most exciting chapter. 

The capitulacion, or contract, in which two such 
strangely different " parties " were set side by side — 
one signing boldly Yo la Reina ("I the Queen" ), 
and the other following with " Francisco [X] Pizarro, 



GAINING GROUND. 227 

his mark" — was the basis of Pizarro's fortunes. 
The man who had been sneered at and neglected by 
narrow minds that had constantly hindered his one 
great hope, now had won the interest and support 
of his sovereigns and their promise of a magnificent 
reward, — of which latter we may be sure a man of 
his calibre thought less than of the chance to realize 
his dream of discovery. Followers he had to bait 
with golden hopes ; and for that matter it was but 
natural and right 
that after more than 
fifty years of pover- 
ty and deprivation 
he should also think 
somewhat of com- 
fort and wealth for 
himself. But no 
man ever did or ever will do from mere sordidness 
such a feat as Pizarro's. Such successes can be 
won only by higher minds with higher aims; and 
it is certain that Pizarro's chief ambition was for a 
nobler and more enduring thing than gold. 

The contract with the Crown gave to Francisco 
Pizarro the right to find and make a Spanish empire 
of the country of New Castile, which was the name 
given to Peru. He had leave " to explore, conquer, 
pacify, and colonize " the land from Santiago to a 
point two hundred leagues south ; and of this vast 
and unknown new province he was to be governor 
and captain-general, — the highest military rank. 
He was also to bear the titles of adelantado and 




,1 

Autograph of Francisco Pizarro. 



228 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

alguacil-mayor for life, with a salary of seven hundred 
and twenty-five thousand maravedis (about ;^2,ooo) 
a year. Almagro was to be commander of Tum- 
bez, with an annual rental of three hundred thou- 
sand maravedis and the rank of hidalgo. Good 
Father Luque was made Bishop of Tumbez and 
Protector of the Indians, with one thousand ducats 
a year. Ruiz was made Grand Pilot of the South 
Seas; Candia, commander of the artillery; and the 
eleven others who had stood so bravely by Pizarro 
on the lonely isle were all made hidalgos. 

In return, Pizarro was required to pledge himself 
to observe the noble Spanish laws for the government, 
protection, and education of the Indians, and to take 
v/ith him priests expressly to convert the savages to 
Christianity. He was also to raise a force of two 
hundred and fifty men in six months, and equip 
them well, the Crown giving a little help ; and within 
six months after reaching Panama, he must get his 
expedition started for Peru. He was also invested 
with the Order of Santiago ; and thus suddenly raised 
to the proud knighthood of Spain he was allowed 
to add the royal arms to those of the Pizarros, with 
other emblems commemorative of his exploits, — an 
Indian town, with a vessel in the bay, and the little 
camel of Peru. This was a startling and significant 
array of honors, hard to be comprehended by those 
used only to republican institutions. It swept away 
forever the disgrace of Pizarro's birth, and gave 
him an unsullied place among the noblest. It is 
doubly important in that it shows that the Span- 



GAINING GROUND. 



2^9 



ish Crown thus recognized the rank of Pizarro 
in American conquest. Cortez never earned and 
never received such distinction. 

This division of the honors led to very serious 
trouble. Almagro never forgave Pizarro for coming 
out a greater man than he, and charged him with 
selfishly and treacherously seeking the best for him- 
self. Some historians have sided with Almagro; 
but we have every reason to believe that Pizarro 
acted straightforwardly and with truth. As he ex- 
plained, he made every effort to induce the Crown 
to give equal honors to Almagro ; but the Crown 
refused. Pizarro's word aside, it was merely po- 
litical common-sense for the Crown to refuse such 
a request. Two leaders anywhere are a danger; 
and Spain already had had too bitter experience 
with this same thing in America to care to 
repeat it. It was willing to give all honor and 
encouragement to the arms ; but there must be 
only one head, and that head, of course, could 
be none but Pizarro. And certainly any one who 
looks at the mental and moral difference between 
the two men, and what were their actions and 
results both before and after the royal grant, will 
concede that the Spanish Crown made a most 
Hberal estimate for Almagro, and gave him certainly 
quite as much as he was worth. In the whole con- 
tract there is circumstantial evidence that Pizarro 
did his best in behalf of his associate, — the ungrate- 
ful and afterward traitorous Almagro, — an evidence 
mightily corroborated by Pizarro's long patience and 



230 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

clemency toward his vulgar, ignoble, and constantly 
deteriorating comrade. Pizarro had the head that 
fate could not turn. He was neither crushed by 
adversity, nor, rarer yet, spoiled by the most dazzHng 
success, — wherein he rose superior to the greater 
genius, but less noble man. Napoleon. When raised 
from lifelong, abject poverty to the highest pinnacle 
of wealth and fame, Pizarro remained the same 
quiet, modest. God-fearing and God-thanking, pru- 
dent, heroic man. Success only intensified Almagro's 
base nature, and his end was ignominious. 

Having secured his contract with the Crown, 
Pizarro felt a longing to see the scenes of his boy- 
hood. Unhappy as they had been, there was a 
manly satisfaction in going back to look upon these 
places. So the ragged boy who had left his pigs at 
Truxillo, came back now a knighted hero with gray 
hair and undying fame. I do not believe it was for 
the sake of vain display before those who might 
remember him. That was nowhere in the nature 
of Pizarro. He never exhibited vanity or pride. 
He was of the same broad, modest, noble gauge 
as gallant Crook, the greatest and best of our 
Indian conquerors, who was never so content as 
when he could move about among his troops with- 
out a mark in dress or manner to show that he was 
a major-general of the United States army rather 
than some poor scout or hunter. No ; it was the 
man in him that took Pizarro back to Truxillo, — or 
perhaps a touch of the boy that is always left in such 
great hearts. Of course the people were glad to 



GAINING GROUND. 23 1 

honor the hero of such a fairy tale as his sober story 
makes ; but I am sure that the briUiant general was 
glad to escape sometimes from the visitors, and get 
out among the hillsides where he had driven his 
pigs so many years before, and see the same 
old trees and brooklets, and even, no doubt, the 
same ragged, ignorant boy still herding the noisy 
porkers. He might well have pinched himself to 
see if he were really awake ; whether that were not 
the real Francisco Pizarro over yonder, still in his 
rags tending the same old swine, and this gray, 
famous, travelled, honored knight only a dream like 
the years between them. And he was the very man 
who, finding himself awake, would have gone over 
to the ragged herder and sat down beside him upon 
the sward with a gentle Como lo va, aniigo ? — " How 
goes it, friend?" And when the wondering and 
frightened lad stammered or tried to run away from 
the first great personage that had ever spoken to 
him, Pizarro would talk so kindly and of such won- 
derful things that the poor herder would look upon 
him with that hero-worship which is one of the 
purest and most helpful impulses in all our nature, 
and wonder if he too might not sometime be some- 
what like this splendid, quiet man who said, '' Yes, 
my boy, I used to herd pigs right here." The more 
I think of it, from what we know of Pizarro, the surer 
I am that he really did look up the old pastures and 
the swine and their ignorant keepers, and talked with 
them simply and gently, and left in them the resolve 
to try for better things. 



232 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

But the interest which everywhere centred upon 
Pizarro did not bring in recruits to his banner as 
fast as could be desired. Most people would much 
rather admire the hero than become heroes at the 
cost of similar suffering. Among those who joined 
him were his brothers, Hernando, Gonzalo, and Juan, 

who were to figure promi- 

Ij^c^ n ^n JL nently in the New World, 

jy yf^ jlj xJ I \y though until now they 



had never been heard of. 

Autograph of Hernando Pizarro. 



// 



Hernando, the eldest of 
the brothers, was the only 
legitimate son, and was much better educated. But 
he was also the worst ; and being without the strict 
principles of Francisco made a sorry mark in the 
end. Juan was a sympathetic figure, and distin- 
guished himself by his great manliness and cour- 
age before he came to an untimely end. Gonzalo 
was a genuine knight- 
errant, fearless, gen- 
erous, and chivalric, 
beloved alike in the 
New World by the sol- 
diers he led and the 
Indians he conquered. He made one of the most 
incredible marches in all history, and would have won 
a great name, probably, had not the death of his 
guide-brother Francisco thrown him into the power 
of evil counsellors like the scoundrel Carabajal and 
others, who led and pushed him to ruin. But while 
none of the brothers were wicked men, nor cow- 




Autograph of Juan Pizarro. 



GAINING GROUND. 233 

ards, nor fools, there was none like Francisco. He 
was one of the rare types of whom but a few have 
been scattered, far apart, up and down the world's 
path. He had not only the qualities which make 
heroes and which are very common, fortunately for 
us, but with them the insight and the unfaltering 
aim of genius. Less than Napoleon in insight, 
because less learned, fully as great in resolve and 
greater in principle, he was one of the prominent 
men of all time. 

But the six months were up, and he still lacked 
something of the necessary two hundred and fifty 
recruits. The Council was about to inspect his 
expedition, and Pizarro, fearing that the strict letter 
of the law might now prevent the consummation of 
his great plans just for the want of a few men, and 
growing desperate at the thought of further delay, 
waited no longer for official leave, but slipped his 
cable and put to sea secretly in January, 1530. It 
was not exactly the handsomest course to take, but 
he felt that too much was at stake to be risked on 
a mere technicality, and that he was keeping the 
spirit if not the letter of the law. The Crown evi- 
dently looked upon the matter in the same light, for 
he was neither brought back nor punished. After a 
tedious voyage he got safely to Santa Marta. Here 
his new soldiers were aghast at hearing of the great 
snakes and alligators to be encountered, and a con- 
siderable number of the weaker spirits deserted. 
Almagro, too, began an uproar, declaring that 
Pizarro had robbed him of his rightful honors ; but 



234 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

De Luque and Espinosa pacified the quarrel, helped 
by the generous spirit of Pizarro. He agreed to 
make Almagro the adelantado, and to ask the Crown 
to confirm the appointment. He also promised to 
provide for him before he did for his own brothers. 

Early in January, 1531, Francisco Pizarro sailed 
from Panama on his third and last voyage to the 
south. He had in his three vessels one hundred 
and eighty men and twenty-seven horses. That 
was not an imposing army, truly, to explore and 
conquer a great country ; but it was all he could get, 
and Pizarro was bound to try. He made the real 
conquest of Peru with a handful of rough heroes ; 
indeed, he would certainly have tried, and very 
possibly would have succeeded in the vast under- 
taking, if he had had but fifty soldiers ; for it was 
very much more the one man who conquered Peru 
than his one hundred and eighty followers. Almagro 
was again left behind at Panama to try to drum up 
recruits. 

Pizarro intended to sail straight to Tumbez, and 
there effect his landing ; but storms beat back the 
weak ships, so that he was obliged to change his 
plan. After thirteen days he landed in the Bay of 
San Mateo (St. Matthew) , and led his men by land, 
while the vessels coasted along southward. It was 
an enormously difficult tramp on that inhospitable 
shore, and the men could scarcely stagger on. But 
Pizarro acted as guide, and cheered them up by 
words and example. It was the old story with him. 
Everywhere he had fairly to carry his company. 



GAINING GROUND. 235 

Their legs no doubt were as strong as his, though 
he must have had a very wonderful constitution; 
but there is a mental muscle which is harder and 
more enduring, and has held up many a tottering 
body, — the muscle of pluck. And that pluck of 
Pizarro was never surpassed on earth. You might 
almost say it had to carry his army pick-a-back. 

Wild as the region was, it had some mineral wealth. 
Pizarro collected (so Pedro Pizarro^ says) two hun- 
dred thousand caste llanos (each weighing a dollar) 
of gold. This he sent back to Panama by his vessels 
to speak for him. // was the kind of argument the 
rude adventurers on the Isthmus could understand, 
and he trusted to its yellow logic to bring him re- 
cruits. But while the vessels had gone on this 
important errand, the little army, trudging down 
the coast, was suffering greatly. The deep sands, 
the tropic heat, the weight of their arms and armor 
were almost unendurable. A strange and horrible 
pestilence broke out, and many perished. The 
country grew more forbidding, and again the suffer- 
ing soldiers lost hope. At Puerto Viejo they were 
joined by thirty men under Sebastian de Belalcazar, 
who afterward distinguished himself in a brave 
chase of that golden butterfly which so many pur- 
sued to their death, and none ever captured, — the 
myth of the Dorado. 

Pushing on, Pizarro finally crossed to the island 
of Pund, to rest his gaunt men, and get them in 

1 A Spanish historian of the sixteenth century, a relative 
of Francisco Pizarro. 



236 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

trim for the conquest. The Indians of the island 
attempted treachery ; and when their ringleaders 
were captured and punished, the whole swarm of 
savages fell desperately on the Spanish camp. It 
was a most unequal contest; but at last courage 
and discipline prevailed over mere brute force, 
and the Indians were routed. Many Spaniards 
were wounded, and among them Hernando Pizarro, 
who got an ugly javelin-wound in the leg. But the 
Indians gave them no rest, and were constantly 
harassing them, cutting off stragglers, and keeping 
the camp in endless alarm. Then fortunately came 
a reinforcement of one hundred men with a few 
horses, under command of Hernando de Soto, the 
heroic but unfortunate man who later explored the 
Mississippi. 

Thus strengthened, Pizarro crossed back to the 
mainland on rafts. The Indians disputed his 
passage, killed three men on one raft, and cut 
off another raft, whose soldiers were overpowered. 
Hernando Pizarro had already landed ; and though 
a dangerous mud-flat lay between, he spurred his 
floundering horse through belly-deep mire, with a 
few companions, and rescued the imperilled men. 

Entering Tumbez, the Spaniards found the pretty 
town stripped and deserted. Alonso de Molina and 
his companion had disappeared, and their fate was 
never learned. Pizarro left a small force there, and 
in May, 1532, marched inland, sending De Soto 
with a small detachment to scout the base of the 
giant Andes. From his very first landing, Pizarro 



GAINING GROUND. 237 

enforced the strictest discipline. His soldiers must 
treat the Indians well, under the severest penalties. 
They must not even enter an Indian dwelling ; and 
if they dared disobey this command they were 
sternly punished. It was a liberal and gentle policy 
toward the Indians which Pizarro adopted at the 
very start, and maintained inflexibly. 

After three or four weeks spent in exploring, 
Pizarro picked out a site in the valley of Tangara, 
and founded there the town of San Miguel (St. 
Michael). He built a church, storehouse, hall of 
justice, fort and dwellings, and organized a govern- 
ment. The gold they had collected he sent back 
to Panama, and waited several weeks hoping for 
recruits. But none came, and it was evident that 
he must give up the conquest of Peru, or undertake 
it with the handful of men he already had. It did 
not take a Pizarro long to choose between such 
alternatives. Leaving fifty soldiers under Antonio 
Navarro to garrison San Miguel, and with strict laws 
for the protection of the Indians, Pizarro marched 
Sept. 24, 1532, toward the vast and unknown 
interior. 



238 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



IV. 

PERU AS IT WAS. 

NOW that we have followed Pizarro to Peru, and 
he is about to conquer the wonderful land to 
find which he has gone through such unparalleled 
discouragements and sufferings, we must stop for a 
moment to get an understanding of the country. 
This is the more necessary because such false and 
foolish tales of '*the Empire of Peru" and "the 
reign of the Incas," and all that sort of trash, have 
been so widely circulated. To comprehend the Con- 
quest at all, we must understand what there was to 
conquer ; and that makes it necessary that I should 
sketch in a few words the picture of Peru that was so 
long accepted on the authority of grotesquely mis- 
taken historians, and also Peru as it really was, and 
as more scholarly history has fully proved it to have 
been. 

We were told that Peru was a great, rich, populous, 
civilized empire, ruled by a long line of kings who 
were called Incas ; that it had dynasties and noble- 
men, throne and crown and court; that its kings 
conquered vast territories, and civilized their con- 
quered savage neighbors by wonderful laws and 
schools and other tools of the highest political 



PERU AS IT WAS. 



239 



economy; that they had mihtary roads finer than 
those built by the Romans, and a thousand miles in 
length, with wonderful pavement and bridges ; that 
this wonderful race believed in one Supreme Being ; 
that the king and all of the royal blood were immeas- 
urably above the common people, but mild, just, 
paternal, and enlightened ; that there were royal 
palaces everywhere ; that they had canals four 
or five hundred miles long, and county fairs, and 
theatrical representations of tragedy and comedy; 
that they carved emeralds with bronze tools the 
making of which is now a lost art ; that the govern- 
ment took the census, and had the populace edu- 
cated ; and that while the policy of the remarkable 
aborigines of Mexico was the policy of hate, that of 
the Inca kings was the pohcy of love and mildness. 
Above all, we were told much of the long line of 
Inca monarchs, the royal family, whose last great 
king, Huayna Capac,, had died not a great while be- 
fore the coming of the Spaniards. He was repre- 
sented as dividing the throne between his sons Ata- 
hualpa and Huascar, who soon quarrelled and began 
a wicked and merciless fratricidal war with armies 
and other civilized arrangements. Then, we were 
told, came Pizarro and took advantage of this un- 
fraternal war, arrayed one brother against the other, 
and thus was enabled at last to conquer the empire. 
All this, with a thousand other things as ridiculous, 
as untrue, and as impossible, is part of one of the 
most fascinating but misleading historical romances 
ever written. It never could have been written if 



240 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

the beautiful and accurate science of ethnology had 
then been known. The whole idea of Peru so long 
prevalent was based upon utter ignorance of the 
country, and, above all, of Indians everywhere. For 
you must remember that these wonderful beings, 
whose pictured government puts to shame any civil- 
ized nation now on earth, were nothing but Indians. 
I do not mean that Indians are not men, with all the 
emotions and feelings and rights of men, — rights 
which I only wish we had protected with as honor- 
able care as Spain did. But the North and South 
American Indians are very like each other in their 
social, religious, and political organization, and very 
unlike us. The Peruvians had indeed advanced 
somewhat further than any other Indians in America, 
but they were still Indians. They had no adequate 
idea of a Supreme Being, but worshipped a bewil- 
dering multitude of gods and idols. There was 
no king, no throne, no dynasty, no royal blood, 
nor anything else royal. Anything of that sort was 
even more impossible among the Indians than it 
would be now in our own republic. There was 
not, and could not be, even a nation. Indian life is 
essentially tribal. Not only can there be no king 
nor anything resembling a king, but there is no such 
thing as heredity, — except as something to be 
guarded against. The chief (and there cannot be 
even one supreme chief) cannot hand down his 
authority to his son, nor to any one else. The suc- 
cessor is elected by the council of officials who have 
such things in charge. Where there are no kings 



PERU AS IT WAS. 241 

there can be no palaces, — and there were neither 
in Peru. As for fairs and schools and all those 
things, they were as untrue as impossible. There 
was no court, nor crown, nor nobility, nor census, nor 
theatres, nor anything remotely suggesting any of 
them ; and as for the Incas, they were not kings nor 
even rulers, but a tribe of Indians, They were the 
only Indians in the Americas who had the smelter ; 
and that enabled them to make rude gold and silver 
ornaments and images ; so their country was the 
richest in the New World, and they certainly had a 
remarkable though barbaric splendor. The temples 
of their blind gods were bright with gold, and the 
Indians wore precious metals in profusion, just as our 
own Navajos and Pueblos in New Mexico and Ari- 
zona wear pounds and pounds of silver ornaments 
to-day. They made bronze tools too, some of which 
had a very good temper ; but it was not an art, only 
an accident. Two of those tools were never found 
of the same alloy ; the Indian smith simply guessed 
at it, and had to throw away many a tool for every 
one he accidentally made. 

The Incas were one of the Peruvian tribes, at 
first weak and sadly mauled about by their neigh- 
bors. At last, driven from their old home, they 
stumbled upon a valley which was a natural fortress. 
Here they built their town of Cuzco, — for they 
built towns as did our Pueblos, but better. Then 
when they had fortified the two or three passes 
by which alone that pocket in the Andes can be 
reached, they were safe. Their neighbors could 
16 



242 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

no longer get in to kill and rob them. In time 
they grew to be numerous and confident, and like 
all other Indians (and some white peoples) at once 
began to sally out to kill and rob their neighbors. 
In this they succeeded very well, because they had 
a safe place to retreat to ; and, above all, because 
they had their little camels, and could carry food 
enough to be gone long from home. They had do- 
mesticated the llama, which none of the neighbor 
tribes, except the Aymaros, had done ; and this gave 
the Incas an enormous advantage. They could 
steal out from their safe valley in a large force, with 
provisions for a month or more, and surprise some 
village. If they were beaten off, they merely 
skulked in the mountains, living by their pack-train, 
constantly harassing and cutting off the villagers 
until the latter were simply worn out. We see 
what the Uttle camel did for the Incas : it enabled 
them to make war in a manner no other Indians in 
America had then ever used. With this advantage 
and in this manner this warrior tribe had made what 
might be called a " conquest " over an enormous 
country. The tribes found it cheaper at last to yield, 
and pay the Incas to let them alone. The robbers 
built storehouses in each place, and put there an 
official to receive the tribute exacted from the con- 
quered tribe. These tribes were never assimilated. 
They could not enter Cuzco, nor did Incas come to 
live among them. It was not a nation, but a coun- 
try of Indian tribes held down together by fear of 
the one stronger tribe. 



PERU AS IT WAS. 243 

The organization of the Incas was, broadly speak- 
ing, the same as that of any other Indian tribe. 
The most prominent official in such a tribe of land- 
pirates was naturally the official who had charge of 
the business of fighting, — the war-captain. He was 
the commander in war ; but in the other branches 
of government he was far from being the only or the 
highest man ! And that is simply what Huayna Capat 
and all the other fabulous Inca kings were, — Indian 
war-captains of the same influence as several Indian 
war-captains I know in New Mexico. 

Huayna Capac's sons were also Indian war-cap- 
tains, and nothing more, — moreover, war-captains 
of different tribes, rivals and enemies. Atahualpa 
moved down from Quito with his savage warriors, 
and had several fights, and finally captured Huascar 
and shut him up in the Indian fort at Xauxa.^ 

That was the state of things when Pizarro began 
his march inland; and lest you should be misled 
by assertions that the condition of things in Peru 
was differently stated by the Spanish historians, it is 
needful to say one thing more. The Spanish chroni- 
clers were not liars nor blunderers, — any more than 
our own later pioneers who wrote gravely of the 
Indian King Philip, and the Indian King Powhatan, 
and the Indian Princess Pocahontas. Ethnology 
was an unknown science then. None of those old 
writers comprehended the characteristic Indian or- 
ganization. They saw an ignorant, naked, supersti- 
tious man who commanded his ignorant followers ; 
1 Pronounced S6w-sa. 



244 ^^^ SPANISH PIONEERS. 

he was a person in authority, and they called him a 
king because they did not know what else to call him. 
The Spaniards did the same thing. All the world 
in those days had but one little foot-rule where- 
with to measure governments or organizations ; 
and ridiculous as some of their measurements seem 
now, no one then could do better. No ; the mis- 
takes of the Spanish chroniclers were as honest and 
as ignorant as those which Prescott made three cen- 
turies later, and by no means so absurd. 

Peru, however, was a very wonderful country to 
have been built up by simple Indians, without even 
that national organization or spirit which is the first 
step toward a nation. Its " cities " were substantial, 
and in their construction had considerable claim to 
skill ; the farms were better than those of our 
Pueblos, because they had indigenous there the 
potato and other plant-foods unknown then in our 
southwest, and were watered by the same system of 
irrigation common to all the sedentary tribes. They 
were the only shepherd Indians, and their great 
flocks of llamas were a very considerable source of 
wealth ; while the camel's-hair cloths of their own 
weaving were not disdained by the proud ladies of 
Spain. And above all, their rude ovens for melting 
metal enabled them to supply a certain dazzling dis- 
play, which was certainly not to be expected among 
American Indians : indeed, it would surprise us to 
enter churches anywhere and find them so bright 
with golden plates and images and dados as were 
some of their barbaric temples. We cannot say 



PERU AS IT WAS. 245 

that they never made human sacrifices; but these 
hideous rites were rare, and not to be compared with 
the daily horrors in Mexico. For ordinary sacrifices, 
the llama was the victim. 

It was into the strongholds of this piratical but 
uncommon Indian tribe that Pizarro was now lead- 
ing his little band. 



246 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



THE CONQUEST OF PERU. 

CERTAINLY no army ever marched in the face 
of more hopeless odds. Against the count- 
less thousands of the Peruvians, Pizarro had one hun- 
dred and seventy-seven men. Only sixty-seven of 
these had horses. In the whole command there were 
but three guns ; and only twenty men had even cross- 
bows ; all the others were armed with sword, dagger, 
and lance. A pretty array, truly, to conquer what 
was an empire in size though not in organization ! 

Five days out from San Miguel, Pizarro paused 
to rest. Here he noticed that the seeds of discon- 
tent were among his followers ; and he adopted a 
remedy characteristic of the man. Drawing up his 
company, he addressed^them in friendly fashion. He 
said he wished San Miguel might be better guarded ; 
its garrison was very small. If there were any now 
who would rather not proceed to the unknown dan- 
gers of the interior, they were at perfect liberty to 
return and help guard San Miguel, where they should 
have the same grants of land as the others, besides 
sharing in the final profits of the conquest. 

It was an audacious yet a wise step. Four foot- 
soldiers and five cavalrymen said they believed they 



THE CONQUEST OP PERU 247 

would go back to San Miguel ; and back they went, 
while the loyal one hundred and sixty-eight pressed 
on, pledged anew to follow their intrepid leader to 
the end. 

De Soto, who had been out on a scout for eight 
days, now returned, accompanied by a messenger 
from the Inca war-captain, Atahualpa. The Indian 
brought gifts, and invited them to visit Atahualpa, 
who was now encamped with his braves at Caxa- 
marca.^ Felipillo, the young Indian from Tumbez, 
who had gone back to Spain with Pizarro and had 
learned Spanish, now made a very useful interpreter ; 
and through him the Spaniards were able to converse 
with the Inca Indians. Pizarro treated the mes- 
senger with his usual courtesy, and sent him home 
with gifts, and marched on up the hills in the direc- 
tion of Caxamarca. One of the Indians declared 
that Atahualpa was simply decoying the Spaniards 
into his stronghold to destroy them without the 
trouble of going after them, which was quite true ; 
and another Indian declared that the Inca war- 
captain had with him a force of at least fifty thou- 
sand men. But without faltering, Pizarro sent an 
Indian ahead to reconnoitre, and pushed on through 
the fearful mountain passes of the Cordillera, cheering 
his men with one of his characteristic speeches : — 

" Let all take heart and courage to do as I expect of 

you, and as good Spaniards are wont to do. And do 

not be alarmed by the multitude the enemy is said to 

have, nor by the small number of us Christians. For 

1 Pronounced Cash-a-w<ir-ca. 



248 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

even if we were fewer and the opposing army greater, 
the help of God is much greater yet ; and in the utmost 
need He aids and favors His own to disconcert and 
humble the pride of the infidels, and bring them to the 
knowledge of our holy faith." 

To this knightly speech, the men shouted that 
they would follow wherever he led. Pizarro went 
ahead with forty horsemen and sixty infantry, leaving 
his brother Hernando to halt with the remaining 
men until further orders. It was no child's play, 
climbing those awful paths. The horsemen had to 
dismount, and even then could hardly lead their 
horses up the heights. The narrow trails wound 
under hanging cliffs and along the brinks of gloomy 
quebradas^ — narrow clefts, thousands of feet deep, 
where the rocky shelf was barely wide enough to 
creep along. The pass was commanded by two 
remarkable stone forts ; but luckily these were 
deserted. Had an enemy occupied them, the Span- 
iards would have been lost; but Atahualpa was 
letting them walk into his trap, confident of crush- 
ing them there at his ease. At the top of the pass 
Hernando and his men were sent for, and came 
up. A messenger from Atahualpa now arrived with 
a present of llamas ; and at about the same time 
Pizarro's Indian spy returned, and reiterated that 
Atahualpa meant treachery. The Peruvian mes- 
senger plausibly explained the suspicious movements 
related by the spy. His explanation was far from 
satisfactory ; but Pizarro was too wise to show his 

^ Pronounced kay-^rtfy^-das. 



THE CONQUEST OP PERU. 249 

distrust. Nothing but a confident front could save 
them now. 

The Spaniards suffered much from cold in cross- 
ing that lofty upland ; and even the descent on the 
east side of the Cordillera was full of difficulty. On 
the seventh day they came in sight of Caxamarca in 
its pretty oval valley, — a pocket of the great range. 
Off to one side was the camp of the Inca war-captain 
and his army, covering a great area. On the 15 th 
of November, 1532, the Spaniards entered the town. 
It was absolutely deserted, — a serious and danger- 
ous omen. Pizarro halted in the great square or 
common, and sent De Soto and Hernando Pizarro 
with thirty-five cavalry to Atahualpa's camp to ask an 
interview. They found the Indian surrounded by a 
luxury which startled them ; and the overwhelming 
number of warriors impressed them no less. To 
their request Atahualpa replied that to-day he was 
keeping a sacred fast (itself a highly suspicious 
fact), but to-morrow he would visit the Spaniards 
in the town. ** Take the houses on the square," he 
said, " and enter no others. They are for the use 
of all. When I come, I will give orders what shall 
be done." 

The Peruvians, who had never seen a horse before, 
were astounded at these mounted strangers, and 
doubly charmed when Ue Soto, who was a gallant 
horseman, displayed his prowess, — not for vanity ; it 
was a matter of very serious importance to impress 
these outnumbering barbarians with the dangerous 
abilities of the strangers. 



2SO 



THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



The events of the next day deserve special atten- 
tion, as they and their direct consequences have been 
the basis of the unjust charge that Pizarro was a cruel 
man. The real facts are his full justification. 

On the morning of November 1 6, after an anxious 
night, the Spaniards were up with the first gray 
dawn. It was plain now that they had walked right 
into the trap ; and the chances were a hundred to 
one that they would never get out. Their Indian 
spy had warned them truly. Here they were 
cooped up in the town, one hundred and sixty-eight 
of them ; and within easy distance were the un- 
numbered thousands of the Indians. Worse yet, 
they saw their retreat cut off; for in the night 
Atahualpa had thrown a large force between them 
and the pass by which they had entered. Their 
case was absolutely hopeless, — nothing but a 
miracle could save them. But their miracle was 
ready, — it was Pizarro. 

It is by one of the finest provisions of Nature that 
the right sort of minds think best and swiftest when 
there is most need for them to think quickly and 
well. In the supreme moment all the crowding, 
jumbled thoughts of the full brain seem to be sud- 
denly swept aside, to leave a clear space down 
which the one great thought may leap forward like 
the runner to his goal, — or like the lightning which 
splits the slow, tame air asunder even as its fire 
dashes on its way. Most intelligent persons have 
that mental lightning sometimes ; and when it can 
be relied on to come and instantly illumine the 



THE CONQUEST OF PERU. 25 1 

darkest crisis, it is the insight of genius. It was 
that which made Napoleon, Napoleon ; and made 
Pizarro, Pizarro. 

There was need of some wonderfully rapid, some 
almost superhuman thinking. What could over- 
come those frightful odds ? Ah ! Pizarro had it ! 
He did not know, as we know now, what super- 
stitious reasons made the Indians revere Atahualpa 
so; but he did know that the influence existed. 
Somewhat as Pizarro was to the Spaniards, was their 
war-captain to the Peruvians, — not only their 
military head, but literally equal to " a host in him- 
self." Very well ! If he could capture this treach- 
erous chieftain, it would reduce the odds greatly ; 
indeed, it would be the bloodless equivalent of 
depriving the hostile force of several thousand 
men. Besides, Atahualpa would be a pledge for 
the peace of his people. And as the only way 
out of destruction, Pizarro determined to capture 
the war-captain. 

For this brilliant strategy he at once made care- 
ful preparations. The cavalry, in two divisions 
commanded respectively by Hernando de Soto and 
Hernando Pizarro, was hidden in two great hallways 
which opened into the square. In a third hallway 
were put the infantry ; and with twenty men Pizarro 
took his position at a fourth commanding point. 
Pedro de Candia, with the artillery, — two poor little 
falconets, — was stationed on the top of a strong 
building. Pizarro then made a devout address to 
his soldiers; and with public prayers to God to 



252 



THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



aid and preserve them, the Uttle force awaited its 
enemy. 

The day was nearly gone when Atahualpa entered 
town, riding on a golden chair borne high on the 
shoulders of his servants. He had promised to 
come for a friendly visit, and unarmed ; but singu- 
larly his friendly visit was made with a following 
of several thousand athletic warriors ! Ostensibly 
they were unarmed ; but underneath their cloaks 
they clutched bows and knives and war-clubs. Ata- 
hualpa was certainly not above curiosity, uncon- 
cerned as he had seemed. This new sort of men 
was too interesting to be exterminated at once. He 
wished to see more of them, and so came, but per- 
fectly confident, as a cruel boy might be with a fly. 
He could watch its buzzings for a time ; and when- 
ever he was tired of that, he had but to turn down 
his thumb and crush the fly upon the pane. He 
reckoned too soon. A hundred and seventy Spanish 
bodies might be easily crushed ; but not when they 
were animated by one such mind as their leader's. 

Even now Pizarro was ready to adopt peaceful 
measures. Good Fray Vicente de Valverde, the 
chaplain of the little army, stepped forth to meet 
Atahualpa. It was a strange contrast, — the quiet, 
gray-robed missionary, with his worn Bible in his 
hand, facing the cunning Indian on his golden 
throne, with golden ornaments and a necklace of 
emeralds. Father Valverde spoke. He said they 
came as servants of a mighty king and of the true 
God. They came as friends ; and all they asked 



THE CONQUEST OF PERU. 253 

was that the Indian chief should abandon his idols 
and submit to God, and accept the king of Spain as 
his ally J not as his sovereign. 

Atahualpa, after looking curiously at the Bible 
(for of course he had never seen a book before), 
dropped it, and answered the missionary curtly and 
almost insultingly. Father Valverde's exhortations 
only angered the Indian, and his words and manner 
grew more menacing. Atahualpa desired to see the 
sword of one of the Spaniards, and it was shown 
him. Then he wished to draw it ; but the soldier 
wisely declined to allow him. Father Valverde did 
not, as has been charged, then urge a massacre ; 
he merely reported to Pizarro the failure of his con- 
ciliatory efforts. The hour had come. Atahualpa 
might now strike at any moment ; and if he struck 
first, there was absolutely no hope for the Spaniards. 
Their only salvation was in turning the tables, and 
surprising the surprisers. Pizarro waved his scarf 
to Candia ; and the ridiculous little cannon on the 
housetop boomed across the square. It did not hit 
anybody, and was not meant to ; it was merely to 
terrify the Indians, who had never heard a gun, and 
to give the signal to the Spaniards. The descriptions 
of how the " smoke from the artillery rolled in 
sulphurous volumes along the square, blinding the 
Peruvians, and making a thick gloom," can best be 
appreciated when we remember that all this deadly 
cloud had to come from two little pop-cannon that 
were carried over the mountains on horseback, and 
three old flintlock muskets ! Yet in such a ridicu- 



254 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

lous fashion have most of the events of the conquest 
been written about. 

Not less false and silly are current descriptions of 
the " massacre " which ensued. The Spaniards all 
sallied out at the signal and fell upon the Indians, 
and finally drove them from the square. We cannot 
believe that two thousand were slain, when we con- 
sider how many Indians one man would be capable 
of killing with a sword or clubbed musket or cross- 
bow in half an hour's running fight, and multiplying 
that by one hundred and sixty- eight ; for after such 
a computation we should believe, not that two thou- 
sand, but two hundred is about the right figure for 
those killed at Caxamarca. 

The chief efforts of the Spaniards were necessa- 
rily not to kill, but to drive off the other Indians and 
capture Atahualpa. Pizarro had given stern orders 
that the chief must not be hurt. He did not wish 
to kill him, but to secure him alive as a hostage for 
the peaceful conduct of his people. The body- 
guard of the war-captain made a stout resistance ; 
and one excited Spaniard hurled a missile at Atahu- 
alpa. Pizarro sprang forward and took the wound 
in his own arm, saving the Indian chief. At last 
Atahualpa was secured unhurt, and was placed in 
one of the buildings under a strong guard. He 
admitted — with the characteristic bravado of an 
Indian, whose traditional habit it is to show his 
courage by taunting his captors — that he had let 
them come in, secure in his overwhelming numbers, 
to make slaves of such as pleased him, and put the 



THE CONQUEST OF PERU. 255 

Others to death. He might have added that had the 
wily war-chief his father been alive, this never would 
have happened. Experienced old Huayna Capac 
would never have let the Spaniards enter the town, 
but would have entangled and annihilated them in 
the wild mountain passes. But Atahualpa, being 
more conceited and less prudent, had taken a 
needless risk, and now found himself a prisoner and 
his army routed. The biter was bitten. 

The distinguished captive was treated with the 
utmost care and kindness. He was a prisoner only 
in that he could not go out ; but in the spacious and 
pleasant rooms assigned him he had every comfort. 
His family lived with him ; his food, the best that 
could be procured, he ate from his own dishes ; and 
every wish was gratified except the one wish to get 
out and rally his Indians for war. Father Valverde, 
and Pizarro himself, labored earnestly to convert 
Atahualpa to Christianity, explaining the worthless- 
ness and wickedness of his idols, and the love of the 
true God, — as well as they could to an Indian, to 
whom, of course, a Christian God was incomprehen- 
sible. The worthlessness of his own gods Atahualpa 
was not slow to admit. He frankly declared that 
they were nothing but liars. Huayna Capac had 
consulted them, and they answered that he would 
live a great while yet, — and Huayna Capac had 
promptly died. Atahualpa himself had gone to ask 
the oracle if he should attack the Spaniards : the 
oracle had answered yes, and that he would easily 
conquer them. No wonder the Inca war-chief had 
lost confidence in the makers of such predictions. 



256 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

The Spaniards gathered many llamas, considerable 
gold, and a large store of fine garments of cotton 
and camel's-hair. They were no longer molested ; 
for the Indians without their professional war-maker 
were even more at a loss than a civilized army 
would be without its officers, for the Indian leader 
has a priestly as well as a military office, — and their 
leader was a prisoner. 

At last Atahualpa, anxious to get back to his forces 
at any cost, made a proposition so startling that the 
Spaniards could scarce believe their ears. If they 
would set him free, he promised to fill the room 
wherein he was a prisoner as high as he could reach 
with gold, and a smaller room with silver ! The room 
to be filled with golden vessels and trinkets (nothing 
so compact as ingots) is said to have been twenty- 
two feet long and seventeen wide ; and the mark he 
indicated on the wall with his fingers was nine feet 
from the floor ! 



THE GOLDEN RANSOM. 257 



VI. 

THE GOLDEN RANSOM. 

THERE is no reason whatever to doubt that 
Pizarro accepted this proposition in perfect 
good faith. The whole nature of the man, his reli- 
gion, the laws of Spain, and the circumstantial evi- 
dence of his habitual conduct lead us to believe 
that he intended to set Atahualpa free when the 
ransom should have been paid. But later circum- 
stances, in which he had neither blame nor control, 
simply forced him to a different course. 

Atahualpa's messengers dispersed themselves 
through Peru to gather the gold and silver for the 
ransom. Meanwhile, Huascar, — who, you will re- 
member, was a prisoner in the hands of Atahualpa's 
men, — having heard of the arrangement, sent word 
to the Spaniards setting forth his own claims. Pizarro 
ordered that he should be brought to Caxamarca to 
tell his story. The only way to learn which of the rival 
war- captains was right in his claims was to bring them 
together and weigh their respective pretensions. But 
this by no mean suited Atahualpa. Before Huascar 
could be brought to Caxamarca he was assassinated 
by his Indian keepers, the henchmen of Atahualpa, — 
and, it is commonly agreed, by Atahualpa's orders. 
17 



258 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

The gold and silver for the ransom came in slowly. 
Historically there is no doubt what was Atahualpa's 
plan in the whole arrangement. He was merely 
buying time, — alluring the Spaniards to wait and 
wait, until he could collect his forces to his rescue, 
and then wipe out the invaders. This, indeed, began 
to dawn on the Spaniards. Tempting as was the 
golden bait, they suspected the trap behind it. It 
was not long before their fears were confirmed. They 
began to learn of the secret rallying of the Indian 
forces. The news grew worse and worse ; and even 
the daily arrival of gold — some days as high as 
;^5 0,000 in weight — could not blind them to the 
growing danger. 

It was necessary to learn more of the situation 
than they could know while shut up in Caxamarca ; 
and Hernando Pizarro was sent out with a small 
force to scout to Guamachucho and thence to Pacha- 
camac, three hundred miles. It was a difficult and 
dangerous reconnoissance, but full of interest. Their 
way along the table-land of the Cordillera was a toil- 
some one. The story of great military roads is largely 
a myth, though much had been done to improve 
the trails, — a good deal after the rude fashion of 
the Pueblos of New Mexico, but on a larger scale. 
The improvements, however, had been only to 
adapt the trails for the sure-footed llama ; and the 
Spanish horses could with great difficulty be hauled 
and pushed up the worst parts. Especially were 
the Spaniards impressed with the rude but effective 
swinging bridges of vines, with which the Indians 



THE GOLDEN RANSOM. 259 

had spanned narrow but fearful chasms; yet even 
these swaying paths were most difficult to be crossed 
with horses. 

After several weeks of severe travel, the party 
reached Pachacamac without opposition. The fa- 
mous temple there had been stripped of its treasures, 
but its famous god — an ugly idol of wood — re- 
mained. The Spaniards dethroned and smashed 
this pagan fetich, purified the temple, and set up 
in it a large cross to dedicate it to God. They 
explained to the natives, as best they could, the 
nature of Christianity, and tried to induce them 
to adopt it. 

Here it was learned that Chalicuchima, one of 
Atahualpa's subordinate war-captains, was at Xauxa 
with a large force ; and Hernando decided to visit 
him. The horses were in ill shape for so hard a 
march ; for their shoes had been entirely worn out 
in the tedious journey, and how to shoe them was 
a puzzle : there was no iron in Peru. But Her- 
nando met the difficulty with a startling expedient. 
If there was no iron, there was plenty of silver; 
and in a short time the Spanish horses were shod 
with that precious metal, and ready for the march 
to Xauxa. It was an arduous journey, but well 
worth making. Chalicuchima voluntarily decided 
to go with the Spaniards to Caxamarca to consult 
with his superior, Atahualpa. Indeed, it was just 
the chance he desired. A personal conference 
would enable them to see exactly what was best to 
be done to get rid of these mysterious strangers. 



26o THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

So the adventurous Spaniards and the wily sub-chief 
got back at last to Caxamarca together. 

Meanwhile Atahualpa had fared very well at the 
hands of his captors. Much as they had reason to 
distrust, and did distrust, the treacherous Indian, 
they treated him not only humanely but with the 
utmost kindness. He lived in luxury with his family 
and retainers, and was much associated with the 
Spaniards. They seem to have been trying their ut- 
most to make him their friend, — which was Pizar- 
ro's principle all along. Prejudiced historians can 
find no answer to one significant fact. The Indi- 
ans came to regard Pizarro and his brothers Gonzalo 
and Juan as their friends, — and an Indian, suspi- 
cious and observant far beyond us, is one of the last 
men in the world to be fooled in such things. Had 
the Pizarros been the cruel, merciless men that 
partisan and ill-informed writers have represented 
them to be, the aborigines would have been the first 
to see it and to hate them. The fact that the people 
they conquered became their friends and admirers is 
the best of testimony to their humanity and justice. 

Atahualpa was even taught to play chess and 
other European games; and besides these efforts 
for his amusement, pains was also taken to give 
him more and more understanding of Christianity. 
Notwithstanding all this, his unfriendly plots were 
continually going on. 

In the latter part of May the three emissaries who 
had been sent to Cuzco for a portion of the ransom 
got back to Caxamarca with a great treasure. From 



THE GOLDEN RANSOM. 26 1 

the famous Temple of the Sun alone the Indians 
had given them seven hundred golden plates ; and 
that was only a part of the payment from Cuzco. 
The messengers brought back two hundred loads 
of gold and twenty-five of silver, each load being 
carried on a sort of hand-barrow by four Indians. 
This great contribution swelled the ransom per- 
ceptibly, though the room was not yet nearly filled 
to the mark agreed upon. Pizarro, however, was 
not a Shylock. The ransom was not complete, but 
it was enough ; and he had his notary draw up 
a document formally freeing Atahualpa from any 
further payment, — in fact, giving him a receipt in 
full. But he felt obliged to delay setting the war- 
captain at liberty. The murder of Huascar and 
similar symptoms showed that it would be suicidal 
to turn Atahualpa loose now. His intentions, though 
masked, were fully suspected, and so Pizarro told 
him that it would be necessary to keep him as a 
hostage a little longer. Before it would be safe for 
him to release Atahualpa he knew that he must have 
a larger force to withstand the attack which Atahualpa 
was sure at once to organize. He was rather better 
acquainted with the Indian vindictiveness than some 
of his closet critics are. 

Meantime Almagro had at last got away from Pan- 
ama with one hundred and fifty foot and fifty horse, 
in three vessels ; and landing in Peru, he reached 
San Miguel in December, 1532. Here he heard 
with astonishment of Pizarro's magical success, and 
of the golden booty, and at once communicated 
with him. At the same time his secretary secretly 



262 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

forwarded a treacherous letter to Pizarro, trying to 
arouse enmity and betray Almagro. The secretary 
had gone to the wrong man, however, for Pizarro 
spurned the contemptible offer. Indeed, his treat- 
ment of his unadmirable associate from first to last 
was more than just ; it was forbearing, friendly, and 
magnanimous to a degree. He now sent Almagro 
assurance of his friendship, and generously welcomed 
him to share the golden field which had been won 
with very little help from him. Almagro reached 
Caxamarca in February, 1533, and was cordially 
received by his old companion-in-arms. 

The vast ransom — a treasure to which there is 
no parallel in history — was now divided. This 
division in itself was a labor involving no small 
prudence and skill. The ransom was not in coin 
or ingots, but in plates, vessels, images, and trinkets 
varying greatly in weight and in purity. It had to 
be reduced to something like a common standard. 
Some of the most remarkable specimens were saved 
to send to Spain ; the rest was melted down to in- 
gots by the Indian smiths, who were busy a month 
with the task. The result was almost fabulous. 
There were 1,326,539 pesos de oro^ commercially 
worth, in those days, some five times their weight, — 
that is, about ^6,632,695. Besides this vast sum of 
gold there were 51,610 marks of silver, equivalent 
by the same standard to ^1,135,420 now. 

The Spaniards were assembled in the public 
square of Caxamarca. Pizarro prayed that God 
would help him to divide the treasure justly, and the 
apportionment began. First, a fifth of the whole 



THE GOLDEN RANSOM. 263 

great golden heap was weighed out for the king of 
Spain, as Pizarro had promised in the capitulacion. 
Then the conquerors took their shares in the order 
of their rank. Pizarro received 57,222 pesos de oro, 
and 2,350 marks of silver, besides the golden chair 
of Atahualpa, which weighed ^25,000. Hernando 
his brother got t,\, 0^0 pesos de oro, and 2,350 marks 
of silver. De Soto had 17,749 pesos de oro, and 
724 marks of silver. There were sixty cavalrymen, 
and most of them received 8,880 pesos de oro, and 
362 marks of silver. Of the one hundred and five 
infantry, part got half as much as the cavalry each, 
and part one fourth less. Nearly ^100,000 worth 
of gold was set aside to endow the first church 
in Peru, — that of St. Francis. Shares were also 
given Almagro and his followers, and the men who 
had stayed behind at San Miguel. That Pizarro suc- 
ceeded in making an equitable division is best evi- 
denced by the absence of any complaints, — and 
his associates were not in the habit of keeping quiet 
under even a fancied injustice. Even his defamers 
have never been able to impute dishonesty to the 
gallant conqueror of Peru. 

To put in more graphic shape the results of this 
dazzling windfall, we may tabulate the list, giving 
each share in its value in dollars to-day : — 

To the Spanish Crown $1,553,623 

" Francisco Pizarro 462,810 

" Hernando Pizarro 207,100 

" De Soto 104,628 

" each cavalryman 52,364 

" each infantryman 26,182 



264 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

All this was besides the fortunes given Almagro 
and his men and the church. 

This is the nearest statement that can be made 
of the value of the treasure. The study of the enor- 
mously complicated and varying currency values of 
those days is in itself the work for a whole lifetime ; 
but the above figures are practically correct. Pres- 
cott's estimate that the peso de oro was worth eleven 
dollars at that time is entirely unfounded; it was 
close to five dollars. The mark of silver is much 
more difficult to determine, and Prescott does not 
attempt it at all. The mark was not a coin, but a 
weight ; and its commercial value was about twenty- 
two dollars at that time. 



ATAHUALPA'S TREACHERY. 265 



VII. 

ATAHUALPA'S TREACHERY AND DEATH. 

BUT in the midst of their happiness at this 
realization of their golden dreams, — and we 
may half imagine how they felt, after a life of pov- 
erty and great suffering, at now finding themselves 
rich men, — the Spaniards were rudely interrupted 
by less pleasant realities. The plots of the Indians, 
always suspected, now seemed unmistakable. News 
of an uprising came in from every hand. It was 
reported that two hundred thousand warriors from 
Quito and thirty thousand of the cannibal Caribs 
were on their way to fall upon the little Spanish 
force. Such rumors are always exaggerated ; but 
this was probably founded on fact. Nothing else 
was to be expected by any one even half so familiar 
with the Indian character as the Spaniards were. 
At all events, our judgment of what followed must be 
guided not merely by what was true, but even more 
by what the Spaniards believed to be true. They 
had reason to believe, and there can be no ques- 
tion whatever that they did believe, that Atahualpa's 
machinations were bringing a vastly superior force 
down upon them, and that they were in imminent 
peril of their lives. Their newly acquired wealth 



266 ; THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

only made them the more nervous. It is a curious 
but common phase of human nature that we do not 
realize half so much the many hidden dangers to 
our lives until we have acquired something which 
makes life seem better worth the living. One may 
often see how a fearless man suddenly becomes cau- 
tious, and even laughably fearful, when he gets a 
dear wife or child to think of and protect ; and I 
doubt if any stirring boy has come to twenty years 
without suddenly being reminded, by the posses- 
sion of some little treasure, how many things might 
happen to rob him of the chance to enjoy it. He 
sees and feels dangers that he had never thought 
of before. 

The Spaniards certainly had cause enough to be 
alarmed for their lives, without any other consid- 
eration; but the sudden treasure which gave those 
lives such promise of new and hard-earned bright- 
ness undoubtedly made their apprehensions more 
acute, and spurred them to more desperate efforts 
to escape. 

There is not the remotest evidence of any 
sort that Pizarro ever meditated any treachery to 
Atahualpa; and there is very strong circumstantial 
evidence to the contrary. But now his followers 
began to demand what seemed necessary for their 
protection. Atahualpa, they believed, had betrayed 
them. He had caused the murder of his brother 
Huascar, who was disposed to make friends with them, 
for the sake of being put by this alliance above the 
power of his merciless rival. He had baited them 



ATAHUALPA'S TREACHERY. 267 

with a golden ransom, and by delaying it had gained 
time to have his forces organized to crush the Span- 
iards, — and now they demanded that he must not 
only be punished, but be put past further plotting. 
Their logic was unanswerable by any one in the same 
circumstances ; nor can I now bring myself to quarrel 
with it. Not only did they believe their accusation 
just, — it probably was just ; at all events, they acted 
justly by the light they had. So serious was the 
alarm that the guards were doubled, the horses were 
kept constantly under saddle and bridle, and the 
men slept on their arms ; while Pizarro in person 
went the rounds every night to see that everything 
was ready to meet the attack, which was expected 
to take place at any moment. 

Yet in this crisis the Spanish leader showed a 
manly unwiUingness even to see^n treacherous. He 
was a man of his word, as well as a humane man ; 
and it was hard for him to break his promise to set 
Atahualpa free, even when he was fully absolved by 
Atahualpa's own utter violation of the spirit of the 
contract. But it was impossible to withstand the 
demands of his followers; he was responsible for 
their lives as well as his own, and when it came 
to a question between them and Atahualpa there 
could be but one decision. Pizarro opposed, but 
the army insisted, and at last he had to yield. Yet 
even then, when the enemy might come at any 
moment, he insisted upon a full and formal trial 
for his prisoner, and saw that it was given. The 
court found Atahualpa proven guilty of causing his 



268 THE SPANISH PIONEERS, 

brother's murder, and of conspiring against the 
Spaniards, and condemned him to be executed that 
very night. If there were any delay, the Indian 
army might arrive in time to rescue their war- 
captain, and that would greatly increase the odds 
against the Spaniards. That night, therefore, in the 
plaza of Caxamarca, Atahualpa was executed by the 
garrote; and the next day he was buried from 
the Church of St. Francis with the highest honors. 

Again the Peruvians were taken by surprise, this 
time by the death of Atahualpa. Without the direc- 
tion of their war-captain and the hope of rescuing 
him, they found themselves hesitating at a direct 
attack upon the Spaniards. They stayed at a safe 
distance, burning villages and hiding gold and other 
articles which might ^'give comfort to the enemy; " 
and upon the whole, though the immediate danger 
had been averted by the execution of the war- 
captain, the outlook was still extremely ominous. 
Pizarro, who did not understand the Peruvian titles 
better than some of our own historians have done, 
and in hope of bringing about a more peaceful feel- 
ing, appointed Toparca, another son of Huayna 
Capac, to be war-captain ; but this appointment 
did not have the desired effect. 

It was now decided to undertake the long and 
arduous march to Cuzco, the home and chief town 
of the Inca tribe, of which they had heard such 
golden stories. Early in September, 1533, Pizarro 
and his army — now swelled by Almagro's force to 
some four hundred men — set out from Caxamarca. 



• AT AH U ALP A' S TREACHERY. 269 

It was a journey of great difficulty and danger. The 
narrow, steep trails led along dizzy cliffs, across 
bridges almost as difficult to walk as a hammock 
would be, and up rocky heights where there were 
only foot-holes for the agile llama. At Xauxa a 
great number of Indians were drawn up to oppose 
them, intrenched on the farther side of a freshet- 
swollen stream. But the Spaniards dashed through 
the torrent, and fell upon the savages so vigorously 
that they presently gave way. 

In this pretty valley Pizarro had a notion to found 
a colony; and here he made a brief halt, sending 
De Soto ahead with a scouting-party of sixty men. 
De Soto began to find ominous signs at once. Vil- 
lages had been burned and bridges destroyed, so 
that the crossing of those awful quebradas was most 
difficult. Wherever possible, too, the road had 
been blocked with logs and rocks, so that the pas- 
sage of the cavalry was greatly impeded. Near 
Bilcas he had a sharp brush with the Indians ; and 
though the Spaniards were victorious, they lost sev- 
eral men. De Soto, however, resolutely pushed on. 
Just as the wearied little troop was toiling up the 
steep and winding defile of the Vilcaconga, the 
wild whoop of the Indians rang out, and a host of 
warriors sprang from their hiding-places behind 
rock and tree, and fell with fury upon the Span- 
iards. The trail was steep and narrow, the horses 
could barely keep their footing ; and under the 
crash of this dusky avalanche rider and horse went 
rolling down the steep. The Indians fairly swarmed 



2 70 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

upon the Spaniards like bees, trying to drag the sol- 
diers from their saddles, even clinging desperately 
to the horses' legs, and dealing blows with agile 
strength. Farther up the rocky pathway was a level 
space ; and De Soto saw that unless he could gain 
this, all was lost. By a supreme effort of muscle and 
will, he brought his little band to the top against such 
heavy odds ; and after a brief rest, he made a charge 
upon the Indians, but could not break that grim, 
dark mass. Night came on, and the worn and bleed- 
ing Spaniards — for few men or horses had escaped 
without wounds from that desperate melee, and sev- 
eral of both had been killed — rested as best they 
might with weapons in their hands. The Indians 
were fully confident of finishing them on the mor- 
row, and the Spaniards themselves had little room 
for hope to the contrary. But far in the night they 
suddenly heard Spanish bugles in the pass below, 
and a little later were embracing their unexpected 
countrymen, and thanking God for their deliverance. 
Pizarro, learning of the earlier dangers of their 
march, had hurriedly despatched Almagro with a 
considerable force of cavalry to help De Soto ; and 
the reinforcement by forced marches arrived just 
in the nick of time. The Peruvians, seeing in the 
morning that the enemy was reinforced, pressed the 
fight no further, and retreated into the mountains. 
The Spaniards, moving on to a securer place, camped 
to await Pizarro. 

He soon came up, having left the treasure at 
Xauxa, with forty men to guard it. But he was 



ATAHUALPA'S TREACHERY. 27 1 

greatly troubled by the aspect of affairs. These 
organized and audacious attacks by the enemy, and 
the sudden death of Toparca under suspicious cir- 
cumstances, led him to believe that Chalicuchima, 
the second war-captain, was acting treacherously, — 
as he very probably was. After rejoining Almagro, 
Pizarro had Chahcuchima tried ; and being found 
guilty of treason, he was promptly executed. We 
cannot help being horrified at the manner of the 
execution, which was by fire ; but we must not be 
too hasty in calling the responsible individual a 
cruel man for all that. All such things must be 
measured by comparison, and by the general spirit 
of the age. The world did not then deem the stake 
a cruelty; and more than a hundred years later, 
when the world was much more enlightened. Chris- 
tians in England and France and New England saw 
no harm in that sort of an execution for certain 
offences, — and surely we shall not say that our 
Puritan forefathers were wicked and cruel men. 
They hanged witches and whipped infidels, not from 
cruelty, but from the blind superstition of their 
time. It seems a hideous thing now, but it was not 
thought so then; and we must not expect that 
Pizarro should be wiser and better than the men 
who had so many advantages that he had not. I 
certainly wish that he had not allowed Chalicuchima 
to be burned ; but I also wish that the shocking pages 
of Salem and slavery could be blotted from our own 
story. In neither case, however, would I brand Pizarro 
as a monster, nor the Puritans as a cruel people. 



272 



THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



At this juncture, the Inca Indian Manco came 
in gorgeous fashion to Pizarro and proposed an alH- 
ance. He claimed to be the rightful war-chief, and 
desired that the Spaniards recognize him as such. 
His proposition was gladly accepted. 

Moving onward, the Spaniards were again am- 
bushed in a defile, but beat off their assailants ; and 
at last entered Cuzco November 15, 1533. It was the 
largest Indian " city " in the western hemisphere, 
though not greatly larger than the pueblo of Mex- 
ico ; and its superior buildings and furnishings filled 
the Spaniards with wonder. A great deal of gold 
was found in caves and other hiding-places. In one 
spot were several large gold vases, gold and silver 
images of llamas and human beings, and cloths 
adorned with gold and silver beads. Among other 
treasures Pedro Pizarro, an eye-witness and chroni- 
cler, mentions ten rude " planks " of silver twenty 
feet long, a foot wide, and two inches thick. The 
total treasure secured footed up <,^o, 200 pesos de 
oro and 215,000 marks of silver, or an equivalent 
of about ^7,600,000. 

Pizarro now formally crowned Manco as " ruler " 
of Peru, and the natives seemed very well pleased. 
Good Father Valverde was made bishop of Cuzco ; 
a cathedral was founded ; and the devoted Spanish 
missionaries began actively the work of educating 
and converting the heathen, — a work which they 
continued with their usual effectiveness. 

Quizquiz, one of Atahualpa's subordinate war- 
captains and a leader of no small prowess, still 



ATAHUALPA'S TREACHERY. ^73 

kept the field. Almagro with a few cavalry, and 
Manco with his native followers, were sent out 
and routed the hostiles; but Quizquiz held out 
until put to death by his own men. 

In March, 1534, Pedro de Alvarado, Cortez's 
gallant lieutenant, who had been rewarded for his 
services in Mexico by being made governor of 
Guatemala, landed and marched on Quito, only to 
discover that it was in Pizarro's territory. A 
compromise was made between him and Pizarro; 
Alvarado received a compensation for his fruitless 
expedition, and went back to Guatemala. 

Pizarro was now very busy in developing the new 
country he had conquered, and in laying the corner- 
stone of a nation. January 6, 1535, he founded the 
Ciudad de los Reyes, the City of the Kings, in the 
lovely valley of Rimac. The name was soon changed 
to Lima ; and Lima, the capital of Peru, remains to 
this day. The remarkable conqueror was now show- 
ing another side of his character, — his genius as an 
organizer and administrator of affairs. He addressed 
himself to the task of upbuilding Lima with energy, 
and his direction of all the affairs of his young gov- 
ernment showed great foresight and wisdom. 

Meantime Hernando, his brother, had been sent 
to Spain with the treasure for the Crown, arriving 
there in January, 1534. Besides the " royal fifth " 
he carried half a miWion pesos de oro belonging to 
those adventurers who had decided to enjoy their 
money at home. Hernando made a great impression 
in Spain. The Crown fully confirmed all former 



2^4 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

grants to Pizarro, and extended his territory seventy 
leagues to the south ; while Almagro was empowered 
to conquer Chile (then called New Toledo), begin- 
ning at the south end of Pizarro's domain and run- 
ning south two hundred leagues. Hernando was 
knighted, and given command of an expedition, — 
one of the largest and best equipped that had sailed 
from Spain. He and his followers had a terrible 
time in getting back to Peru, and many perished 
on the way. 



FOUNDING A NATION, 27$ 



VIII. 

FOUNDING A NATION. — THE SIEGE OF 
CUZCO. 

BUT before Hernando reached Peru, one of his 
company carried thither to Almagro the news 
of his promotion ; and this prosperity at once 
turned the head of the coarse and unprincipled 
soldier. Forgetful of all Pizarro's favors, and that 
Pizarro had made him all he was, the false friend at 
once set himself up as master of Cuzco. 

It was shameful ingratitude and rascality, and 
very nearly precipitated the Spaniards into a civil 
war. But the forbearance of Pizarro bridged the 
difficulty at last; and on the 12 th of June, 1535, the 
two captains renewed their friendly agreement. 
Almagro soon marched off to try — and to fail in — 
the conquest of Chile ; and Pizarro turned his atten- 
tion again to developing his conquered province. 

In the few years of his administrative career 
Pizarro achieved remarkable results. He founded 
several new towns on the coast, naming one Trux- 
illo in memory of his birthplace. Above all, he 
delighted in upbuilding and beautifying his favorite 
city of Lima, and promoting commerce and other 
necessary factors in the development of the new 



276 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

nation. How wise were his provisions is attested 
by a striking contrast. When the Spaniards first 
came to Caxamarca a pair of spurs was worth ^250 
in gold ! A few years before Pizarro's death the 
first cow brought to Peru was sold for ^10,000; two 
years later the best cow in Peru could be bought 
for less than ^200. The first barrel of wine sold for 
^1600; but three years later native wine had taken 
the place of imported, and was to be had in Lima 
at a cheap price. So it was with almost everything. 
A sword had been worth $250; a cloak, $500; a 
pair of shoes, ^200; a horse, $10,000; but under 
Pizarro's surprising business ability it took but two 
or three years to place the staples of life within the 
reach of every one. He encouraged not only com- 
merce but home industry, and developed agriculture, 
mining, and the mechanical arts. Indeed, he was 
carrying out with great success that general Spanish 
principle that the chief wealth of a country is not its 
gold or its timber or its lands, but its people. It 
was everywhere the attempt of the Spanish Pioneers 
to uplift and Christianize and civilize the savage 
inhabitants, so as to make them worthy citizens of 
the new nation, instead of wiping them off the face 
of the earth to make room for the new-comers, as 
has been the general fashion of some European 
conquests. Now and then there were mistakes and 
crimes by individuals; but the great principle of 
wisdom and humanity marks the whole broad course 
of Spain, — a course which challenges the admira- 
tion of every manly man. 



THE SIEGE OP CUZCO. 277 

While Pizarro was busy with his work, Manco 
showed his true colors. It is not at all improbable 
that he had meditated treachery throughout, and 
had made alliance with the Spaniards simply to get 
them in his power. At all events he now suddenly 
slipped away, without provocation, to raise forces to 
attack the Spaniards, thinking to overcome them 
while they were scattered at work in their various 
colonies. The loyal Indians warned Juan Pizarro, 
who captured and imprisoned Manco. Just then 
Hernando Pizarro arrived from Spain, and Francisco 
gave him command at Cuzco. The wily Manco 
fooled Hernando into setting him free, and at once 
began to rally his forces. Juan was sent out with 
sixty mounted men, and finally met Manco's thou- 
sands at Yucay. In a terrible struggle of two days 
the Spaniards held their ground, though with heavy 
loss, and then were startled by a messenger with 
the news that Cuzco itself was besieged by the sav- 
ages. By a forced march they got back to the city 
by nightfall, and found it surrounded by a vast host. 
The Indians suffered them to enter, — evidently 
desiring to have all their mice in one trap, — and 
then closed in upon the doomed city. 

Hernando and Juan were now shut up in Cuzco. 
They had less than two hundred men, while outside, 
the slopes far and near were dotted with the camp- 
fires of the enemy, — so innumerable as to seem 
" like a sky full of stars." Early in the morning 
(in February, 1536), the Indians attacked. They 
hurled into the town fire-balls and burning arrows, 



278 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

and soon had set fire to the thatched roofs. The 
Spaniards could not extinguish the fire, which raged 
for several days. The only thing that saved them 
from being smothered or roasted to death was the 
public square, in which they huddled. They made 
several sallies, but the Indians had driven stakes 
and prepared other obstacles in which the horses 
became entangled. 

The Spaniards, however, cleared the road under 
a fierce fire and made a gallant charge, which was 
as gallantly resisted. The Indians were expert not 
only with the bow but with the reata as well, and 
many Spaniards were lassoed and slain. The charge 
drove the savages back somewhat, but at heavy cost 
to the Spaniards, who had to return to town. They 
had no chance for rest ; the Indians kept up their 
harrying assaults, and the outlook was very black. 
Francisco Pizarro was besieged in Lima ; Xauxa was 
also blockaded ; and the Spaniards in the smaller 
colonies had been overpowered and slain. Their 
ghastly heads were hurled into Cuzco, and rolled at 
the feet of their despairing countrymen. The case 
seemed so hopeless that many were for trying to cut 
through the Indians and escape to the coast ; but 
Hernando and Juan would not hear of it. 

Upon the hill overlooking Cuzco was — and is 
to this day — the remarkable Inca fortress of the 
Sacsahuaman. It is a cyclopean work. On the side 
toward the city, the almost impregnable bluff was 
made fully impregnable by a huge wall twelve hun- 
dred feet long and of great thickness. On the other 



THE SIEGE OP CUZCO. 



279 



side of the hill the gentler slope was guarded by two 
walls, one above the other, and each twelve hundred 
feet long. The stones in these walls were fitted to- 
gether with surprising skill ; and some single stones 
were thirty-eight feet long, eighteen feet wide, and 
six feet thick ! And, most wonderful of all, they 
had been quarried at least twelve miles away, and 
then transported by the Indians to their present 
site ! The top of the hill was further defended by 
great stone towers. 

This remarkable aboriginal fortress was in the 
hands of the Indians, and enabled them to harass the 
beleaguered Spaniards much more effectively. It 
was plain that they must be dislodged. As a prelim- 
inary to this forlorn hope, the Spaniards sallied out in 
three detachments, commanded by Gonzalo Pizarro, 
Gabriel de Rojas, and Hernando Ponce de Leon, to 
beat off the Indians. The fighting was thoroughly 
desperate. The Indians tried to crush their enemies 
to the earth by the mad rush of numbers ; but at 
last the Spaniards forced the stubborn foe to give 
ground, and fell back to the city. 

For the task of storming the Sacsahuaman Juan 
Pizarro was chosen, and the forlorn hope could 
not have been intrusted to a braver cavalier. 
Marching out of Cuzco about sunset with his little 
force, Juan went off as if to forage ; but as soon 
as it was dark he turned, made a detour, and hur- 
ried to the Sacsahuaman. The great Indian fort 
was dark and still. Its gateway had been closed 
with great stones, built up like the solid masonry; 



28o TME SPANISH PIONEERS. 

and these the Spaniards had much difficulty in re- 
moving without noise. When at last they passed 
through and were between the two giant walls, a 
host of Indians fell upon them. Juan left half his 
force to engage the savages, and with the other half 
opened the gateway in the second wall which had 
been similarly closed. When the Spaniards suc- 
ceeded in capturing the second wall, the Indians re- 
treated to their towers ; and these last and deadliest 
strongholds were to be stormed. The Spaniards 
assaulted them with that characteristic valor which 
faltered at no odds of Nature or of man, but at the 
first onset met an irreparable loss. Brave Juan 
Pizarro had been wounded in the jaw, and his hel- 
met so chafed the wound that he snatched it off and 
led the assault bareheaded. In the storm of Indian 
missiles a rock smote him upon his unprotected 
skull and felled him to the ground. Yet even as he 
lay there in his agony and weltering in his blood, he 
shouted encouragement to his men, and cheered them 
on, — Spanish pluck to the last. He was tenderly 
removed to Cuzco and given every care ; but the 
broken head was past mending, and after a few days 
of agony the flickering life went out forever. 

The Indians still held their stronghold ; and leav- 
ing his brother Gonzalo in charge of beleaguered 
Cuzco, Hernando Pizarro sallied out with a new 
force to attack the towers of the Sacsahuaman. It 
was a desperate assault, but a successful one at last. 
One tower was soon captured ; but in the other and 
stronger one the issue was long doubtful. Conspic- 



THE SIEGE OP CUZCO. 28 1 

uous among its defenders was a huge and fearless 
Indian, who toppled over the ladders and struck 
down the Spaniards as fast as they could scale the 
tower. His valor filled the soldiers with admira- 
tion. Heroes themselves, they could see and re- 
spect heroism even in an enemy. Hernando gave 
strict orders that this brave Indian should not be 
hurt. He must be overpowered, but not struck 
down. Several ladders were planted on different 
sides of the tower, and the Spaniards made a simul- 
taneous rush, Hernando shouting to the Indian that 
he should be preserved if he would yield. But the 
swarthy Hercules, seeing that the day was lost, drew 
his mantle over his head and face, and sprang off 
the lofty tower, to be dashed to pieces at its base. 

The Sacsahuaman was captured, though at heavy 
cost, and thereby the offensive power of the savages 
was materially lessened. Hernando left a small gar- 
rison to hold the fortress and returned to the invested 
city, there with his companions to bear the cruel for- 
tunes of the siege. For five months the siege of 
Cuzco lasted ; and they were five months of great 
suffering and danger. Manco and his host hung 
upon the starving city, fell with deadly fury upon 
the parties that were driven by hunger to sally out 
for food, and harassed the survivors incessantly. All 
the outlying Spanish colonists had been massacred, 
and matters grew daily darker. 

Francisco Pizarro, beleaguered in Lima, had 
beaten off the Indians, thanks to the favorable na- 
ture of the country ; but they hovered always about. 



282 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

He was full of anxiety for his men at Cuzco, and 
sent out four successive expeditions, aggregating 
four hundred men, to their relief. But the rescue- 
parties were successively ambushed in the mountain 
passes, and nearly all were slain. It is said that 
seven hundred Spaniards perished in that unequal 
war. Some of the men begged to be allowed to 
cut through to the coast, take ship, and escape this 
deadly land ; but Pizarro would not hear to such 
abandonment of their brave countrymen at Cuzco, 
and was resolved to stand by them and save them, 
or share their fate. To remove the temptation to 
selfish escape, he sent off the ships, with letters to 
the governors of Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, and 
Nicaragua detailing his desperate situation and 
asking aid. 

At last, in August, Manco raised the siege of 
Cuzco. His great force was eating up the country ; 
and unless he set the inhabitants to their planting, 
famine would presently be upon him. So, sending 
most of the Indians to their farms, he left a large 
force to watch and harass the Spaniards, and him- 
self with a strong garrison retired to one of his forts. 
The Spaniards now had better success in their forays 
for food, and could better stave off starvation ; but 
the watchful Indians were constantly attacking them, 
cutting off men and small parties, and giving them 
no respite. Their harassment was so sleepless and 
so disastrous that to check it Hernando conceived 
the audacious plan of capturing Manco in his strong- 
hold. Setting out with eighty of his best horsemen 



THE SIEGE OF CUZCO. 283 

and a few infantry, he made a long, circuitous march 
with great caution, and without giving the alarm. 
Attacking the fortress at daybreak, he thought to 
take it unawares ; but behind those grim walls the 
Indians were watching for him, and suddenly rising 
they showered down a perfect hail of missiles upon 
the Spaniards. Three times with the courage of 
despair the handful of soldiers pressed on to the 
assault, but three times the outnumbering savages 
drove them back. Then the Indians opened their 
sluice-gates above and flooded the field; and the 
Spaniards, reduced and bleeding, had to beat a 
retreat, hard pressed by the exultant foe. In this 
dark hour, Pizarro was suddenly betrayed by the 
man who, above all, should have been loyal to 
him, — the coarse traitor Almagro. 



284 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 



IX. 

THE WORK OF TRAITORS. 

ALMAGRO had penetrated Chile, suffering great 
hardships in crossing the mountains. Again 
he showed the white feather; and, discouraged by 
the very beginning, he turned and marched back to 
Peru. He seems to have concluded that it would 
be easier to rob his companion and benefactor than 
to make a conquest of his own, — especially since 
he learned how Pizarro was now beset. Pizarro, 
learning of his approach, went out to meet him. 
Manco fell upon the Spaniards on the way, but was 
repulsed after a hot fight. 

Despite Pizarro's manly arguments, Almagro would 
not give up his plans. He insisted that he should 
be given Cuzco, the chief city, pretending that it was 
south of Pizarro's territory. It was really within the 
limits granted Pizarro by the Crown, but that would 
have made no difference with him. At last a truce 
was made until a commission could measure and 
determine where Pizarro's southern boundary lay. 
Meantime Almagro was bound by a solemn oath to 
keep his hands off. But he was not a man to regard 
his oath or his honor ; and on the dark and stormy 
night of April 8, 1537, he seized Cuzco, killed the 



THE WORK OF TRAITORS. 285 

guards, and made Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro 
prisoners. Just then Alonso de Alvarado was com- 
ing with a force to the relief of Cuzco ; but being 
betrayed by one of his own officers, he was captured 
with all his men by Almagro. 

At this critical juncture, Pizarro was strengthened 
by the arrival of his old supporter, the licentiate 
Espinosa, with two hundred and fifty men, and a 
shipload of arms and provisions from his great cousin 
Cortez. He started for Cuzco, but at the overpow- 
ering news of Almagro's wanton treachery, retreated 
to Lima and fortified his little capital. He was 
clearly anxious to avert bloodshed ; and instead of 
marching with an army to punish the traitor, he 
sent an embassy, including Espinosa, to try to bring 
Almagro to decency and reason. But the vulgar 
soldier was impervious to such arguments. He not 
only refused to give up stolen Cuzco, but coolly 
announced his determination to seize Lima also. 
Espinosa suddenly and conveniently died in Alma- 
gro's camp, and Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro 
would have been put to death but for the efforts 
of Diego de Alvarado (a brother of the hero of 
the Noche Triste)^ who saved Almagro from add- 
ing this cruelty to his shame. Almagro marched 
down to the coast to found a port, leaving Gonzalo 
under a strong guard in Cuzco, and taking Hernando 
with him as a prisoner. While he was building his 
town, which he named after himself, Gonzalo Pizarro 
and Alonso de Alvarado made their escape from 
Cuzco and reached Lima in safety. 



286 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

Francisco Pizarro still tried to keep from blows 
with the man who, though now a traitor, had been 
once his comrade. At last an interview was ar- 
ranged, and the two leaders met at Mala. Almagro 
greeted hypocritically the man he had betrayed; 
but Pizarro was of different fibre. He did not wish 
to be enemies with former friends ; but as little 
could he be friend again to such a person. He 
met Almagro's lying welcome with dignified cool- 
ness. It was agreed that the whole dispute should 
be left to the arbitration of Fray Francisco de Boba- 
dilla, and that both parties should abide by his de- 
cision. The arbitrator finally decided that a vessel 
should be sent to Santiago to measure southward 
from there, and determine Pizarro's exact southern 
boundary. Meantime Almagro was to give up 
Cuzco and release Hernando Pizarro. To this 
perfectly just arrangement the usurper refused to 
agree, and again violated every principle of honor. 
Hernando Pizarro was in imminent danger of being 
murdered ; and Francisco, bound to save his brother 
at any cost, bought him free by giving up Cuzco. 

At last, worn past endurance by the continued 
treachery of Almagro, Pizarro sent him warning that 
the truce was at an end, and marched on Cuzco. 
Almagro made every effort to defend his stolen 
prize, but was outgeneralled at every step. He was 
shattered by a shameful sickness, the penalty of his 
base life, and had to intrust the campaign to his 
lieutenant Orgonez. On the 26th of April, 1538, 
the loyal Spaniards, under Hernando and Gonzalo 



THE WORK OP TRAITORS. 287 

Pizarro, Alonso de Alvarado, and Pedro de Valdivia, 
met Almagro's forces at Las Salinas. Hernando 
had Mass said, aroused his men by recounting the 
conduct of Almagro, and led the charge upon the 
rebels. A terrible struggle ensued; but at last 
Orgofiez was slain, and then his followers were soon 
routed. The victors captured Cuzco and made the 
arch-traitor prisoner. He was tried and convicted 
of treason, — for in being traitor to Pizarro, he had 
also been a traitor to Spain, — and was sentenced 
to death. The man who could be so physically 
brave in some circumstances was a coward at the 
last. He begged like a craven to be spared ; but 
his doom was just, and Hernando Pizarro refused 
to reverse the sentence. Francisco Pizarro had 
started for Cuzco ; but before he arrived Almagro 
was executed, and one of the basest treacheries in 
history was avenged. Pizarro was shocked at the 
news of the execution ; but he could not feel other- 
wise than that justice had been done. Like the 
man he was, he had Diego de Almagro, the traitor's 
illegitimate son, taken to his own house, and cared 
for as his own child. 

Hernando Pizarro now returned to Spain. There 
he was accused of cruelties ; and the Spanish gov- 
ernment, prompter than any other in punishing 
offences of the sort, threw him into prison. For 
twenty years the gray-haired prisoner lived behind 
the bars of Medina del Campo ; and when he came 
out his days of work were over, though he lived to 
be a hundred years old. 



288 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

The state of affairs in Peru, though improved by 
the death of Almagro and the crushing of his wicked 
rebellion, was still far from secure. Manco was 
developing what has since come to be regarded as 
the characteristic Indian tactics. He had learned 
that the original fashion of rushing upon a foe 
in mass, fairly to smother him under a crush of 
bodies, would not work against discipline. So he 
took to the tactics of harassment and ambuscade, 
— the policy of killing from behind, which our 
Apaches learned in the same way. He was always 
hanging about the Spaniards, like a wolf about the 
flock, waiting to pounce upon them whenever they 
were off their guard, or when a few were separated 
from the main body. It is the most telling mode of 
warfare, and the hardest to combat. Many of the 
Spaniards fell victims ; in a single swoop he cut off 
and massacred thirty of them. It was useless to 
pursue him, — the mountains gave him an impreg- 
nable retreat. As the only deliverance from this 
harassment, Pizarro adopted a new policy. In the 
most dangerous districts he founded military posts ; 
and around these secure places towns grew rapidly, 
and the people were able to hold their own. Emi- 
grants were coming to the country, and Peru was 
developing a civilized nation out of them and the 
uplifted natives. Pizarro imported all sorts of Euro- 
pean seeds, and farming became a new and civilized 
industry. 

Besides this development of the new little nation, 
Pizarro was spreading the limits of exploration and 



THE WORK OP TRAITORS. 289 

conquest. He sent out brave Pedro de Valdivia, — 
that remarkable man who conquered Chile, and 
made there a history which would be found full of 
thrilling interest, were there room to recount it here. 
He sent out, too, his brother Gonzalo as governor of 
Quito, in 1540. That expedition was one of the 
most astounding and characteristic feats of Spanish 
exploration in the Americas ; and I wish space per- 
mitted the full story of it to enter here. For nearly 
two years the knightly leader and his little band 
suffered superhuman hardships. They froze to 
death in the snows of the Andes, and died of heat 
in the desert plains, and fell in the forest swamps 
of the upper Amazon. An earthquake swallowed 
an Indian town of hundreds of houses before their 
eyes. Their way through the tropic forests had to 
be hewn step by step. They built a httle brigantine 
with incredible toil, — Gonzalo working as hard as 
any, — and descended the Napo to the Amazon. 
Francisco de Orellana and fifty men could not rejoin 
their companions, and floated down the Amazon to 
the sea, whence the survivors got to Spain. Gonzalo 
at last had to struggle back to Quito, — a journey 
of almost matchless horror. Of the three hundred 
gallant men who had marched forth so blithely in 
1540 (not including Orellana's fifty), there were but 
eighty tattered skeletons who staggered into Quito 
in June, 1542. This may give some faint idea of 
what they had been through. 

Meanwhile an irreparable calamity had befallen the 
young nation, and robbed it at one dastardly blow of 
19 



290 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

one of its most heroic figures. The baser followers 
who had shared the treachery of Almagro had been 
pardoned, and well-treated ; but their natures were 
unchanged, and they continued to plot against the 
wise and generous man who had " made " them all. 
Even Diego de Almagro, whom Pizarro had reared 
tenderly as a son, joined the conspirators. The 
ringleader was one Juan de Herrada. On Sunday, 
June 26, 1 54 1, the band of assassins suddenly forced 
their way into Pizarro's house. The unarmed guests 
fled for help ; and the faithful servants who resisted 
were butchered. Pizarro, his half-brother Martinez 
de Alcantara, and a tried ofificer named Francisco 
de Chaves had to bear the brunt alone. Taken all 
by surprise as they were, Pizarro and Alcantara tried 
to hurry on their armor, while Chaves was ordered 
to secure the door. But the mistaken soldier half 
opened it to parley with the villains, and they ran 
him through, and kicked his corpse down the stair- 
case. Alcantara sprang to the door and fought he7 
roically, undaunted by the wounds that grew thicker 
on him. Pizarro, hurling aside the armor there 
was no time to don, flung a cloak over his left arm 
for a shield, and with the right grasping the good 
sword that had flashed in so many a desperate fray 
he sprang like a lion upon the wolfish gang. He 
was an old man now ; and years of such hardship 
and exposure as few men living nowadays ever 
dreamed of had told on him. But the great heart 
was not old, and he fought with superhuman valor 
and superhuman strength. His swift sword struck 



THE WORK OF TRAITORS, 



291 



down the two foremost, and for a moment the trai- 
tors were staggered. But Alcantara had fallen ; and 
taking turns to wear out the old hero, the cowards 
pressed him hard. For several minutes the unequal 
fight went on in that narrow passage, slippery with 
blood, — one gray-haired man with flashing eyes 
against a score of desperadoes. At last Herrada 
seized Narvaez, a comrade, in his arms, and behind 
this living shield rushed against Pizarro. Pizarro 
ran Narvaez through and through \ but at the same 
instant one of the crowding butchers stabbed him 
in the throat. The conqueror of Peru reeled and 
fell; and the conspirators plunged their swords in 
his body. But even then the iron will kept the 
body to the last thought of a great heart ; and call- 
ing upon his Redeemer, Pizarro drew a cross with 
bloody finger upon the floor, bent and kissed the 
sacred symbol, and was dead. 

So lived and so died the man who began life as 
the swineherd of Truxillo, and who ended it the 
conqueror of Peru. He was the greatest of the 
Pioneers ; a man who from meaner beginnings rose 
higher than any ; a man much slandered and ma- 
ligned by the prejudiced ; but nevertheless a man 
whom history will place in one of her highest niches, 
— a hero whom every lover of heroism will one day 
delight to honor. 

Such was the conquest of Peru. Of the romantic 
history which followed in Peru I cannot tell here, — 
of the lamentable fall of brave Gonzalo Pizarro ; 



292 THE SPANISH PIONEERS. 

of the remarkable Pedro de la Gasca ; of the 
great Mendoza's vice-royal promotion ; nor of a 
hundred other chapters of fascinating history. I 
have wished only to give the reader some idea of 
what a Spanish conquest really was, in superlative 
heroism and hardship. Pizarro's was the greatest 
conquest ; but there were many others which were 
not inferior in heroism and suffering, but only in 
genius ; and the story of Peru was very much the 
story of two thirds of the Western Hemisphere. 



THE END. 



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